


The Essential Laws of Human Robotics

by ketren



Series: Life Studies [3]
Category: Big Hero 6 (2014)
Genre: Action/Adventure, Angst with a Happy Ending, Friendship, Gen, I swear, Pseudoscience, Science Fiction, Team Dynamics, Team Feels, also there will be swearing, no seriously in this fic will be the most pseudoscience you read today guaranteed
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-03
Updated: 2017-12-17
Packaged: 2018-11-08 08:49:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 45,428
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11078151
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ketren/pseuds/ketren
Summary: When a late-night call from Abigail propels Hiro and Gogo into a dangerous situation at Krei’s labs, it’ll take the whole team to handle it—if they can stop giving each other the silent treatment for long enough to remember they are, in fact, a team. Everyone grows up, grows apart. Maybe even a team like Big Hero 6. Sequel to A Practical Examination of the Law of Ideality.Chapter 1: Gogo knows they aren't supposed to go on patrol without all of the team en force, but she also knows she and Hiro *technically* promised to stop street racing and bot fighting anyway. In for a penny, in for a pound...





	1. Gogo

Setsuzoku Heights is the place people go to be robbed or murdered. It's the place the _yakuza_ go home to their dens at night. They say a third of the district is intoxicated, either by drugs or alcohol, at any given moment. If you need an unregistered weapon, a new liver, illegal substances, exotic animals or plants, stolen data, unlicensed experiments, or even a contract to kill—word on the street is you'll find it in Setsuzoku.

Of course, Setsuzoku is also the only district in the city where you find a half-decent street race, which always gives Gogo a good excuse to come back.

As she lets her bike coast to a halt at a red light, the warm air wafts over her skin and hair. The night is muggy and tepid in a way that reminds hair of stepping into a bathtub, except that it's filled with some nameless grime that never really goes away. Maybe it's pollutants from the far-off business district of the city proper, or maybe it's something from the rows and rows of squat, hole-in-the-wall eateries like the nearby all-night diner that is even now pumping out the nauseating smell of frying oil.

Either way, Gogo hardly even notices the air quality anymore, and it's not like the area's inhabitants are the types to complain. Setsuzoku is a "low-income area," which basically means there are more get-cash-fast joints per capita than anywhere else in the city, enough homeless people to roam in packs and to have a well-organized tent city beneath the freeway, and a heavily diverse population with just barely enough Koreans and Japanese mixed in for Gogo to feel at home. It also means people look the other way for minor things like a suspicious ring of people exchanging money as they crowd around a pair of bots. Or the loud squeal of motorbikes drifting through a major intersection.

Not Gogo's bike, of course. Hers is nearly silent by design, a pet project she's spent ages on outside of school. A work of art.

In the space before the light turns green, Gogo catches a small movement out of the corner of her eye. With her helmet on, she has to turn her whole head to see. Awash in the red of the streetlight are two guys, older than her and with broad shoulders and hands shoved into coat pockets. Staring.

There's no way to gauge intentions, and Gogo knows that better than anyone, but she also knows what she must look like: a girl of small stature (even in her head, she refuses to call herself short) alone at night. Alone on a customized bike easily worth thousands of credits to the right buyer, and alone in a district that probably won't care enough to file a report for lost property.

She glares back. Eventually, they look away. The light turns green, and she revs her engine and rides away on the rain-slicked street.

Things might have been bad if she'd been any other girl riding any other bike. But a bike like hers is more trouble than it's worth. Too recognizable, which makes it hard to move and sell. And Gogo has the air of someone who can take care of herself. It's not hard to see that she lacks the unease of a tourist, or even the pointed wariness of a long-term visitor. The streets of Setsuzoku thrum in Gogo's blood, and she feels as at home here as she does on SFIT's campus. Maybe it shows, and maybe that's why people leave her alone.

Not that she's really alone, anyway.

A shadow, faint in the dim sliver of moon, rolls lazily across the pavement in front of her. If she hadn't been expecting it, Gogo might have reached for her maglev discs. Instead, she lets her bike slow to a coast before glancing overhead.

It's hard to see past the amber glow of the streetlights and the neon liquor store signs at her side, but Gogo can just make out Baymax's familiar silhouette amid the seething clouds above. And where Baymax is, Hiro is.

Her helmet transmitter crackles to life. "How do you do the 'fuck off' vibe so well?" Hiro asks, his voice sly.

Gogo barks a laugh, rolling the throttle to give her bike a burst of speed. "Years of practice, young punk," she replies flippantly. "You'll get there one day."

As she accelerates, the wind rushes in her ears, but the transmitter automatically raises the volume to compensate. "You have a couple years' advantage over me," Hiro replies. "Because you're old. And you grew up here."

"So it's in my blood. Deal with it."

There's a comfortable pause in which Gogo darts around a slow-moving pickup, jetting past rows of squat, abandoned buildings.

"I do not understand," Baymax interjects finally. "What is in your blood?"

"It's an expression," Hiro replies. "It means...that she's used to things here. Kinda."

"It means I grew up here until I was in high school, before my parents decided this wasn't the life for them and saved enough to get out to the suburbs," Gogo clarifies. "Out to Matsumount Prefecture, actually, like a couple blocks from where Mrs. Matsuda lives. They wanted trees and picket fences and open spaces, you know? Green stuff."

Hiro snorts. " _Green stuff,_ " he repeats, mimicking her dismissive tone. "Why would they want something like that?"

"It's not really my thing," she tells Baymax, ignoring Hiro's quiet laughter. "I hate the suburbs. My parents worry a lot about me being 'alone' in a big city like this, or hanging out in Setsuzoku without them. But since I grew up in this area, and it was part of my upbringing, it's…'part of my blood.' Metaphorically. Get it?"

"I believe I understand better now," Baymax replies, though his voice still has the inquisitive ring that means his curiosity isn't fully sated. "This is the reason you live in a different city from your parents? With Honey Lemon?"

"Yeah," Gogo replies quietly, thinking of her friend. Above her, Hiro seems to sober as well, and the conversation trails off.

It still strikes her sometimes how incredible it is that she and Honey Lemon are friends at all, as different as they are. Both of them credit Tadashi for introducing them to each other, because without him, they might never have really spoken. Even now, their partnership seems odd, but Gogo loves Honey Lemon like the sister she never had.

A sister whose threats of a slow, painful death haven't stopped Gogo or Hiro from sneaking out to Setsuzoku at night.

Because Hiro's got Setsuzoku in his blood too, just in a different way. You'd never guess just from looking at him, though, and that's his problem sometimes. In this part of the city, people assume you're an outsider if you lack a certain demeanor, a grim and wary grit to the face and a sturdy set to your limbs. Gogo's had years of experience carefully cultivating her facade of cool surety, which she wields like a blade each time she returns, but Hiro's got none of that. Instead, he's got the same clean-cropped appearance Tadashi used to have, a wide openness and curiosity that frequent visits to Setsuzoku usually stamp out of most people, sometimes the hard way.

But Hiro's also quick on his feet in a way most people aren't, and he'd made himself known here long before she knew him as Tadashi's brother. Back then, she'd only heard talk of that kid with a shit-eating grin who robbed everyone blind with his hustle and then took off into the night.

Still, it doesn't hurt that he's got Baymax with him now. No one's messing with a six-foot, armored robot in the dark of night. Even Gogo doesn't worry about Hiro being out and about when Baymax is at his side, and she knows the area well.

Somewhere in the distance, church bells chime the hour. Pulled from her thoughts, Gogo swears under her breath and urges her bike faster.

The streets here aren't as easily navigable as the gridded lines of the rest of San Fransokyo. Setsuzoku grew out of a steep hillside northwest of the city proper, and its streets curl like vines threading over and under one another across the land. Gogo loves the complexity of it, the quick drops and short curves, but driving here takes a bit more concentration.

Once she navigates a shallow curve that rounds the back of a lighted motel, Gogo feels comfortable enough to relax a little. Baymax's shadow again passes overhead. "Hey, try not to be seen from the air," Gogo says impulsively, thinking that it'll be way harder to deny their presence in Setsuzoku if the others hear rumors of a flying robot over the district. The silence that follows Gogo's statement is as close to a "no shit" glare as it's possible for Hiro to make without looking at her. "Sorry," Gogo allows, sweeping gently past a slow-moving Honda. "That was a really Wasabi thing to say."

"It was," Hiro teases from above. "Better watch it, Gogo. I don't think we can take _two_ of him in the group."

"Ha ha. How'd the rest of the bot fight go? Looked like one of Megabot's arms wasn't responding that well to the transmitter or something when I left—and by the way, sorry I snuck out for the end. I'm gonna be late as it is."

"That's cool. Yeah, it was _awesome_. We almost tripled the money—and we went to the ATM to transfer it to credits, so you should have access now—and Megabot pretty much destroyed Diesector in the finals, even with the arm thing—"

"Wait— _tripled?_ Really?"

"Yeah! Four eighty, FYI. But it was a tough one. Hard to have it climb over stuff with a broken arm, you know? I'm gonna have to hole up and do some repairs when I get back; I didn't really get a chance to see what was wrong with it."

Gogo lets out a low whistle. "You're killing it even with setbacks."

"Reminds me of when I used to hustle," Hiro laughs. "Sometimes I'd pretend Megabot was broken or something, and then he'd miraculously pull through. Only this time, karma came back to bite me, I guess."

On an impulse, Gogo takes a shortcut—a smaller side street that curls over a few rooftops and then leans away to hug the hillside. "Do you ever miss that part of it? Hustling, I mean. You used to be able to sneak in and out unnoticed, but now that we come up here so often, you're too recognizable."

"Yeah, it's weird that most of the bot fighters know me by name now. But it's not all that different being legit, and putting your actual name on the roster and everything. It's just that people don't bet as much, so it just means it takes a little longer to make the money," he adds slyly.

"It is better that you win fairly," Baymax interjects. "I have found that the chances of violent repercussions following a win decrease sharply when the other party believes that the entirety of the event was 'above board.'"

"That's true. We haven't really had to get out of a fight in ages."

"In addition, I believe it is better for your mental health to win fairly," Baymax continues. "Although 'hustling' accrues more money more quickly, you have seemed happier now that you are able to openly garner the respect of your bot-fighting peers."

"Don't make me sound nice while I'm in Setsuzoku. It ruins my street cred."

"Street cred? What street cred?" Gogo laughs. Then a thought occurs to her. "Hey," she adds suddenly, voice growing loud as she slows enough for an ambulance blaring its alarm to cross her path. "Hey, did I ever tell you how I met Tadashi? I mean really met him, not just seeing him around in classes?"

There's a long pause. For a moment, Gogo is tempted to glance up, as if she might somehow make out Hiro's facial expression through the darkness of the tiny silhouette against the moonlit sky, but she focuses on the road instead. "No," Hiro says at last. "What happened?"

"I actually met him because he was looking for _you_. Here, in Setsuzoku. Bailing you out of trouble, as usual," she adds, and Hiro laughs, startled. "I was in the middle of a race; the track was a little different from the one we're doing tonight, and instead of cutting through the abandoned warehouses out at the city limits, it ran pretty close to Mino's bar.

"So he was on his bike too, and we ran into each other, almost literally—like, swerving around each other in an intersection and everything. Both of us were fine obviously, but I was knocked off of my bike and pretty much skinned my entire left leg. Still got the scar to prove it," she adds, thinking of the way she always becomes more aware of it when she takes a deep turn in a race, the asphalt flashing past just below her leg where the pale scar still stretches.

She shakes her head. "So Tadashi, being Tadashi, like runs over and is treating me like I'm about to die or something...I mean, I guess I was bleeding, but it was really shallow. For about all of a minute, I thought, 'I can still make it. I can still win this.' But I wasn't as good back then as I am now, so I wasn't doing that hot—I think I was in sixth or seventh, and the other racers were just zooming by while Tadashi was trying to figure out how to bandage my leg. Until I beat him off of me.

"So yeah, by the time Tadashi helped me up, there was no way I was winning the race, and I knew it. But when I finally turned to him, probably to yell because I was still kinda mad about the whole thing, I realized I'd seen him around campus before—we had two of our common curriculum classes together. It was just my freshman year, you know, and I remember I didn't know his name, but already he knew mine.

"Anyway, I think he was still worrying about you and all of the crap you were getting up to, because one of the first things out of his mouth when he realized I was okay was 'You know street racing is _really_ dangerous, right?' Like, totally calmly, like he thought maybe I really didn't know anything about it. And before then, I always thought of him as kind of this snobby junior. Kind of a teacher's pet, always speaking up in class and that kind of thing. Right?" she adds as Hiro laughs again.

"He really was, though," Hiro says. "If it was anyone else, you'd think he was a suck up. But Tadashi made it kind of…"

"Cool?"

"Yeah."

"Exactly. But even so, it pissed me off a little, 'cause I thought, well, what right does this random guy have to tell me about my choices? So I asked what a judgemental snob like him was doing in my part of town, only I didn't say it so nice."

Hiro is laughing again now, so hard the transmitter wheezes as he tries to catch his breath, and Gogo grins. "No, but he just looked _crushed._ I mean, at first I thought I really offended him, but then he started talking about this kid brother he had who thought he could handle himself and snuck out of bed at night to do bot fighting in basically the most dangerous area of the city. He talked about how he woke up to find you gone, and you weren't picking up your cell, and he'd spent like an hour looking for you. He was barely keeping it together, he was so worried." She takes the next bend in the road thoughtfully, slowing to let two half-drunk pedestrians wamble across the path. "It was the first time I ever remember seeing his _Hiro Trouble_ face. Sometimes, before we even met you, when we'd see him, we'd just _know_ that you'd been up to something. I guess it was just the eyebrows, maybe.

"So since I knew there was no point in jumping back in the race, and Tadashi was obviously out of place—I guess it was the one of the first times he came to look for you, because he wasn't even in the right area—I felt kinda bad. So I helped him look for you, since he was obviously lost as hell."

"Then _you're_ the reason he suddenly figured out where all the bot fights were," Hiro realizes. "I always wondered. One day, he just suddenly became an expert overnight."

"Yeah, that was me. You deserved it probably," she says unapologetically, continuing before he can interject. "So at first, we were just hopping in and out of some of the alleys and bars where the fights usually happened, wandering in and out of the crowds to see if you were there, and he was completely serious. Same worried expression, not really saying much. But after a while, I think he wanted to distract himself or something, because he just started _talking._ About nothing at first, just some of the projects he was working on, and I think he asked me about my classes, and, I don't know, we probably talked about other stuff too. Movies, maybe. You know me—I don't really talk or open up to people I don't know well, so it was really weird for him to just pour his life out like that. But a part of me just admired him, because he did it so easily. Tadashi just had this way of being a friend to everybody. Just treated you like a friend right off the bat, even...

"Anyway." She clears her throat, which feels a little thick. "Eventually, no matter what we were talking about, it would circle back to you. It was almost funny, because we'd be jumping out of the way of the crowds or a bot fight or a fistfight or even a knife fight once, and he was just glowing as he talked about his kid brother. God, he was crazy.

"We spent probably an hour and a half looking, and he called you a couple of times, I think. The last time he called you, when you finally picked up, he instantly became this whole other person. Like, he went from some over-friendly Prince Charming character to...I don't know, this badass _Dark Knight_ guy or something. I was a little afraid he was going to murder you if he found you."

"I remember being worried about that a lot too," Hiro mutters darkly under his breath.

"Afterwards," Gogo continues, "he got off the call and told me you'd left the bot fights already and that you were safe, and he thanked me for showing him around, but he was kind of in a rush to get to you—probably to kill you. And that was that, I thought. Because like I said, outside of me showing him around Setsuzoku, there was no excuse for us to _ever_ hang out together. Tadashi was super friendly and popular in almost a jock-ish kind of way, and I'm more...sarcastic. And low-key. And weird."

"Like me," Hiro adds.

"Yeah, like you," Gogo replies. They have finally reached the outskirts of Setsuzoku, where empty lots and decrepit buildings give way to the wide road unofficially used as an interstate leading from San Fransokyo to the forested hills beyond. As she comes to the crest of a slope, she can finally make out the small, dark sea of people roaring in the distance below. Here and there, the beams of streetlights catch against hair and clothing in bright patches of color that move slowly with the crowd like the turn of a kaleidoscope.

"I don't know," she adds as she descends, slowing her bike a little to finish their conversation before she reaches the crowd, where the starting line awaits. "Maybe that's why he actually stayed friends with me after that. I thought he wouldn't get me, but he came to sit next to me in class the next day—Honey Lemon and Wasabi weren't in the same class as him, or I guess he would've sat with them—and he started chatting with me online while class was going on. About how it turned out you'd snuck away before we'd even started looking, and how he'd coordinated a total electronics blackout as punishment. All your computers and tech would be dead for a week. He looked so smug about it. I think that's when I realized we were gonna be friends."

Hiro laughs again. "Oh whoa, I almost forgot he did that. It was like the worst week of my life. Well, until he did it again. But it figures _that's_ when you decided he was okay."

"Hey, I can appreciate a mischievous streak," Gogo replies with a grin, and with that, she heads into the crowd. She slows her bike to a crawl for safety's sake, though most of the bystanders part as soon as they realize she's one of the racers, some of them with exuberant whoops and cheers.

She must not be as late as she'd feared, because she passes a handful of other racers on the way, most of them chatting about their bikes or showing them off. This is the part she loves most, the culture of it all—for the enthusiasts, a thrill of excitement hangs heavy in the air, a communal jolt of excitement. Tonight's race will head back toward Setsuzoku taking a different, more complex path than the one Gogo had taken to get here, and she'd wager that there are already clumps of excited people gathering around the hills and bends of the race.

And speaking of wagering, she's got an old friend to see.

In a few areas, the crowd shifts to reveal light sources as she cruises slowly past—a few trash can fires, the headlights of a custom dragster, that sort of thing—but none of them are the one she's looking for. "He is to the west of you," Baymax says suddenly through her transmitter. "Approximately in a 'two o' clock' direction."

"Sweet. Thanks, Baymax," Gogo replies, wrenching her handlebar to one side to avoid a dog trotting across her path.

Once she gets close enough, it's easier to make it out. Strings of old Christmas lights wind up and down the plastic atop a steel-frame event tent, twisting around the sides and back of the rungs to create a three-walled enclosure. Inside, all seven feet of Bug is hunched over the lone table inside the stand, fingers flipping through pages and pages of notes scattered across the surface. A line of people winds around the back, some of them glancing anxiously at the wall timer Bug displays to show the countdown to the race—and therefore the end of the betting period. _Six minutes,_ Gogo thinks. _Made it._

As she rides up, the people in line grumble but make room for her; the bookie always gives priority to racers. Bug straightens and looks up, a wide grin splitting his scarred face at the sight of her. "Gogo! I was getting worried," he exclaims.

Among the racing circles of San Fransokyo, Bug has a reputation for being a bit of an eccentric. A lanky, middle-aged man with the hunched build of a windblown pine, he insists on wearing a tailored suit carefully lined with LED lights that shimmer as he moves—one of his favorite sayings being that _the best way to make money is to glitter._ Rumor has it he'd been just a homeless vagrant before he'd gotten into the betting lifestyle, but despite the spidery fingers that presently clutch a stack of papers under one arm, or the slight limp as he shuffles toward her, Gogo has known him to be quick and ruthless in a fight with anyone foolish enough to take advantage of a man they believed to be a simple moneychanger.

She hops off her bike, placing her helmet on the seat and leaving it where it is as she approaches him. Theft or vandalism is a cardinal sin in the racing community, and there's likely no better place to leave a vehicle alone in the city. "You know me. Cutting it close. I like the drama," she says in a flat, sarcastic tone that makes him laugh.

"Well, it's not so dramatic anymore," Bug confides as she ducks under the rope-joined traffic cones he's using as makeshift stanchions. She steps inside the tent, where the noise of conversation outside will give them at least a shred of privacy against being overheard. "Now that you're coming to every race. Used to be you'd show up with a bang once every few months."

"Gotta get my money's worth," Gogo says pointedly.

"Ah! Yes, only a few minutes left. To business." Bug rifles through his papers, muttering to himself as he uncovers a small, black pad Gogo knows to be the latest mobile credit reader on the market. He picks it up and looks at her breathlessly, eyes gleaming. "Well? What'll it be?"

Gogo knows Bug's got a mind for numbers—taking bets gives him the only high he needs—but she can also feel a thrill of anticipation at her back. A glance behind shows her that the people nearest in the line are trying very hard to feign indifference as they lean in to hear. "Three eighty," she tells Bug with a wolfish grin, swiping her wristband over the reader.

Bug's spindly eyebrows rise. "Confident tonight?"

Gogo shrugs. "You could say that." In truth, her wagers have nothing to do with her confidence levels. Though bookie and bettors alike try to read into the gambling decisions of the racers, Hiro and Gogo have agreed to pool their bets together on these kinds of excursions. They try to keep at least a hundred credits in the account at any given time, giving them a decent starting wager. If Hiro has won some of it in the night's bot fights, Gogo plays the rest on herself in the race.

It's still a little odd to Gogo, who never used to bet at all—she's really just in it for the thrill of the race—but the partnership means money for bike parts and suit upgrades, or even higher-quality engineering materials than they could get with the funds from SFIT.

"Hmph," Bug says by way of reply, watching the reader's screen. "Your odds are still only two to five, you know."

Gogo scowls. "Not much."

"Not much. You'd do better gambling if you weren't a favorite to win," he says, looking up at her. His eyes are piercing. "No scratches or serious injuries like some of the other racers, no serious fights even. Maybe you should throw a few races." Gogo stares back solemnly. After a moment, Bug smiles. "But you wouldn't."

"No," Gogo confirms. The reader beeps as the transaction authenticates.

"Good," he says, whether to her response or to the reader. "You're clear. You'd better get back out there. Race starts soon, and I have about fifty idiots who are gonna be disappointed they can't place a bet _when they lined up only fifteen minutes before the start_."

He raises his voice at the last part, and Gogo snorts at the scowls on the faces in the line. Bug thumps her once on the back.

"Good luck," he tells her. "And Gogo?"

She looks back to him, finding his expression oddly serious. "Don't get me wrong. It's good to see you. But don't take it the wrong way when I say I wish a smart girl like you wouldn't come back here."

With that, he faces the next bettor, nodding for the woman to come in. Gogo turns away.

"Almost everyone's lined up at the starting line," Hiro tells her lazily as soon as she has her helmet back on. "Doubt they're actually gonna start on time, but it's getting close either way."

"I'll make it," Gogo says, revving her engine in warning to give the line a chance to split. As before, she moves cautiously through the crowd, which parts for her like the red sea. It takes her only another minute or so before she breaks through the crowd onto wide, open asphalt.

It's lucky Gogo's been doing this a while; otherwise, she might have been given a rough time for her lateness. As it is, when she drives over to the lineup, most of the others, already in place, grin or wave in her direction. There are maybe two dozen of them in all—not Setsuzoku's largest race, but a fair size.

Min, a sturdy biker of nearly twice Gogo's height and weight, reaches over and thumps a fist against Gogo's helmet as she wheels her bike into place. The strength of the blow, more out of Min's ignorance of her own strength than any real rivalry, knocks Gogo forward a little.

"You're almost late, bitch," Min says amiably. "Do you know how worried I was? This race would have been boring without you."

Gogo smirks. "You mean maybe you might have won without me." Wordlessly, Min flicks her off.

Race volunteers are busy clearing away the last stragglers on the roadway, taking particular pains with a drunken man who keeps stumbling away from them. When at last the street is empty, the flag girl comes to stand in the center of the road. The crowd settles into relative quiet, shifting in anticipation, until the girl holds the white flag up in the air. For a brief moment, a hush falls over everything, a breath of warm breeze wafting across the road as if to stifle all sound.

Gogo's blood thrums in her veins; she leans forward on her bike, and as the flag drops, everything else seems to fall away. The dark road stretches out before her, lengthening and twisting to disappear beyond a distant slope, and that's the only thing that matters. She rockets forward, away from the well-lit crowds and into the night, her headlights gleaming on the asphalt and the sounds of engines roaring in her ears.

Around the bend, the street tapers off to just two lanes, causing something of a bottleneck that settles Gogo firmly behind half a dozen riders; the car races later in the night will have to be run cat-and-mouse style to fit through such narrow roadways. Darting past pockets of screaming fans, they take the corners quickly, avoiding the roads blocked off by cones.

Keeping her chest on the tank, she loses herself in the blur of dark road and the flash of empty buildings flashing past in the corner of either eye, keeping her gaze always at the place where the road disappears around the next turn. It's a hard race, requiring a good sense of when to brake for deeper turns or to speed up for shallower ones, when to hit the throttle on a slope or when to take it at a coasting pace. She jostles the other riders for a better position, Min somewhere at her back as she leans into a turn to spurt into fourth-place position.

"The road a quarter mile away slopes quickly in a twenty-five degree slope," Baymax suddenly says into her ear. All of a sudden, Gogo is taken out of the race, becoming suddenly aware of the way Baymax and Hiro must be somewhere in the blackness above her, darting like a giant bat through the night sky. "And the one you call 'Reese' appears to be having some difficulty shifting gears. I believe if you—"

"Baymax—" Hiro begins in exasperation.

"Thanks, but no thanks," Gogo says quickly, knowing that Baymax sometimes can't help himself. The robot doesn't quite get that part of the thrill is not knowing what's coming next.

Not literally, of course. All of the riders know the race map in advance, though it switches from race to race. And so Gogo lets herself take the next corners slowly and thoughtfully; without momentum on her side, it's a waste to risk having one of her tires lose their grip in a turn. Instead, she puts priority on getting ready for the next straight stretch of road, a long and clear path through the neon-lit buildings of some of the area's seediest dive bars. Before the road even levels out, she's on the gas, darting down the longest and fastest straightaway of the race.

The sound of the wind in her ear blends with a crackle of static. "Hiro? Gogo?"

"Hey, Abigail," Hiro says, taking control of the conversation so Gogo can focus on edging nearer to the third-place rider. "Gogo's busy winning a race. What's up?"

"Sorry, Gogo. I just saw that both of you still had your transmitters on. Though of _course_ it's because you're at the far end of Setsuzoku. Want me to switch you out, Gogo?"

"Nah, I can listen and win at the same time," Gogo responds cockily, sweeping parallel to the rider, who up until this point had been finding little ways to brazenly show off: quick wheelies, speeding and slowing. Now, he glares at her across his drag bars. "Couldn't sleep?"

"Something like that," Abigail sighs. "I closed my eyes, but I think I just tossed and turned for a few hours and then gave up. I figured you two might still be awake. You should really let me know when you're going to be out at night," she adds. "I'd feel a lot better if I were up to monitor you."

Thanks to her ongoing insomnia and inability to follow them around like the athlete she once was, Abigail has come a long way in the past few months as a much needed "control tower" for Big Hero 6. From the Silent Sparrow building that she stubbornly renovated into a workable lab, she has access to their radios, locations, and vital stats as long as they have their transmitters switched on, making their job much easier when complex patrols spread them out across the city.

Of course, as far as Hiro and Gogo are concerned, it helps that she, like them, is occasionally awake at odd hours of the night. Although Gogo had originally been concerned about Abigail's ability to keep their nightly excursions secret, the lab tech has proven herself up for the job. Gogo's not sure Abigail understands why she and Hiro sneak out into the dangerous, crime-riddled world of Setsuzoku every now and then, but at least she seems to understand why they keep it a secret from the other members of Big Hero 6.

From somewhere behind Gogo comes the squeal of tires, followed by the screams and gasps of the crowd assembled at the bend. Gogo doesn't turn around, but she has the feeling someone's eating asphalt.

"It would be better for your health if you were asleep at this hour," Baymax responds. "I believe Hiro and Gogo do not forewarn you of their plans because they hope to give you a chance at rest."

"Exactly. We're not gonna tell you we're going out, just in case," Hiro says huffily.

Abigail mutters something, but it sounds like she's turned away from the mike. "...better if I knew you weren't both in the _most dangerous area of the city_. Remind me again why you do this?"

"Cheap thrills?" Hiro says.

"Hey, definitely not cheap," Gogo retorts.

"Either way, _not sleeping_ seems to be common among the three of us. Baymax, why don't you jump on _them?_ "

"Because we don't look tired all the time?" Gogo asks shamelessly.

"Because we're just dumb kids and we're expected to do stupid stuff like stay up all night?" Hiro adds.

"Because I have learned as a rule that it is impossible to sway either of their opinions on this matter," Baymax explains.

"Figures," Hiro replies as Abigail laughs.

"So I'm the pushover, then?"

Though the others continue to chatter, Gogo tunes out the next part of the conversation as the race takes a sharp turn. _Just a few more minutes,_ she thinks, focusing on the road ahead. _Almost there._

Leaning so far left she's sure her bike is centimeters from sparking against the asphalt, she takes the next slow bend, the first of several that roll back and forth down the side of a steep hill. She has pulled into third place, but ahead of her are still Sendra and Galo, two of the area's best racers, aside from Gogo—and they're good enough that if she doesn't concentrate, she'll come just shy of winning.

"...probably not a big deal. And there's seriously no reason I should be worried about it, you know? He's got his own security team, so I'm sure he's prepared for anything."

"But it's an alert from an alarm system, not a phone call?"

"Right. Which means it could be an accident or a faulty system, or…"

Gogo shouldn't be listening right now, but a warble of anxiety has crept into Abigail's voice, and Gogo hesitates to even turn down her radio. A slice of pavement that stretches straight across a series of train tracks allows her to jump close enough to show Sendra her front wheel.

"It's just...if it weren't so far away, you know? From San Fransokyo, it'll take the nearest emergency team forever to get out there."

"It's behind us. Like, almost in the opposite direction."

"I know. And it's just the three of you, not even a full team. It would just make me feel better…"

"When would we need to leave?"

Abigail is silent for a minute. "Like ten minutes ago."

"What's up?" Gogo asks suddenly, grinding her teeth as she jostles Sendra for the position. The other racer sweeps a little too close to her, but Gogo keeps her bike steady.

"Krei's labs. Out past Matsumont," Hiro replies. "Apparently, an alarm's been thrown up, and no one's responding to calls."

His grim tone matches Gogo's feelings on the matter. Krei isn't high on either of their lists of friends right now, given his sleazy behavior all those months ago when they first met him. But he still means something to Abigail. She doesn't think they're best buddies anymore, exactly—she's not even sure Krei and Abigail have talked to each other since Abigail's accident—but Abigail still speaks of him with a certain softness in her voice.

"That area's behind us," is all Gogo says, the roar of Sendra's engine loud in her ear as the front wheel of Gogo's bike pulls just ahead. They sweep around a car, which honks furiously at their backs.

"That's what I said."

"I know." Abigail says quietly.

Gogo grunts, nearly blinded by the lighted display of a repair shop. "I don't have the mental space for this right now," she says finally. "Hiro, you think we should go?"

Hiro hesitates, and after a moment, Gogo realizes that's all she needs. Disappointment only washes over her for the barest second before she shakes it off. To the surprise of probably everyone behind her, she pulls aside, veering off the designated track to take a side road that will curve around the way they came.

"Just in case," Hiro says apologetically.

"Sorry," Abigail adds. "About the race. And the money."

"Maybe Bug will save it for you?" Hiro asks hopefully. "He's your friend, right?"

"That's not how Bug works," Gogo laughs, speeding down the quiet road as if she's still racing, as if she can still taste the coming win. "Business is business, and friends are totally separate. We'll just start from scratch next time. And who knows?" she adds slyly. "Maybe backing out of this race will boost my betting odds in the next one."

.

"Backup's for wusses," Gogo tells Abigail after she offers for a second time to put a call in to the others on the team.

The night spreads like a warm blanket around them, humid air wafting gently in the wind. The open country roads between Setsuzoku and Matsumount are sparsely lit, and only the slim wedge of moon and the headlights from Gogo's bike brighten the asphalt ahead.

Gogo's proud that she doesn't appear to be slowing Hiro and Baymax by much. The curving roads over hill and mountain make it difficult for her to travel quickly across the land, but the pair of them have no such obstacles. In the open air, free of the lighted blimps and windmills scattered throughout the skies of San Fransokyo, it would have been easier for them to leave her behind and take to their destination as the crow flies. Instead, they keep close, patiently waiting for her to follow the instructions of her visor GPS. As it is, a couple of recent upgrades to her bike (all paid with money earned from their bot-fighting, race-winning outings) speed her up dramatically, including an upgrade to pull the liquid-cooled engine closer to her 200-horsepower goal. Which, of course, means that she's currently moving double the speed limit, and that Wasabi would kill her if he were there.

Lucky Hiro and Baymax are on watch to warn her if something's in her way on the road ahead. Running into a slow-moving driver at this speed would be a really lame way to go out.

"That goes for you, too, Baymax," Hiro warns, probably thinking of their friend's inclination toward randomly calling for help.

"I believe it would be beneficial to at least make your friends aware of your destination," the robot replies, almost sulkily.

"Ew," Hiro says. "No. Do you know how long they'd yell at us? Wasabi especially."

"Besides, we've got Abigail," Gogo adds. "Not like anything's going to happen, but if it did, you'd let the others know, right?"

"I don't know; I guess I'd have to think about it," Abigail deadpans. Gogo can almost hear her eyes rolling. "The map shows you guys are almost there. Can you see it yet?"

"It is visible from our height," Baymax replies.

"It's...big." Hiro adds. "Way bigger than Silent Sparrow, anyway."

"Well, the Silent Sparrow labs were made for one specific project, and they just combined the funds from a lot of different groups and industries. But this one's the main headquarters for all of Krei Tech, all of its employees and experiments. I guess you can probably imagine they're into the kinds of things that make it necessary to keep away from prying eyes. You know he has a few military clients? Well, they like to keep things pretty secret."

It's at this point that Gogo crests the top of a hill to finally look down into the shallow valley in which Krei's facilities are nestled. In the smooth, rolling waves of grass and stone out here in the countryside, the expansive series of buildings looks severely out of place, all sharp edges and sleek, modern facades. Bordered by chain link fence on all sides, the building looks like the picture of a state-of-the-art facility, regardless of the strange juxtaposition of flowering plants throughout the landscaping and menacing _Keep Out_ signs every fifty feet.

There's not much cover for them further down in the valley, at least on the main road to the lab; the forested area nearby has been cleared to make way for a smooth stretch of land leading to the entrance. Gogo slows her bike before she moves into the open. "Looks fine from where I am. God, it's so quiet out here. How do people stand it? Anyway, lemme get my gear on just in case," she says, coming to a stop so she can swing her backpack around. "What else can you tell us about what Krei's been up to?"

"Hm. Not much," Abigail says slowly. There's a rhythmic clinking noise in the feed that suggests she's stirring coffee or tea. "I'm not exactly in contact with him anymore; I just...keep tabs on him. You know. From public records."

"Of course," Hiro replies sarcastically as Gogo slips off her jacket to reveal the reinforced nylon suit she always wears under her armor. "So what's _public record_ say?"

"It's been quiet. _Really_ quiet. No mention of upcoming projects, no proposals, no begging for funding. Nothing. It's almost like they've stopped everything, except that they obviously haven't."

Pulling on her breastplate, Gogo grunts. "Sounds really freaking sketchy to me," she says.

Abigail makes a noncommittal noise. "It's pretty normal, actually. Sometimes you have clients who don't want the competition catching wind of something, or sometimes you want to check the success of a project before you put your reputation on the line. It's not unheard of for labs like this to go quiet for a while."

Gogo leans down to the wheels of her bike, quickly moving the front shock and stem in a complex series of twists. A second later, the bar clicks away from the tire, allowing her to pull out the smaller yellow wheels of her suit. The mechanism for the storage system makes her particularly proud, regardless of the fact that she'd had to practice until she felt comfortable with the amount of time needed to slip them in and out.

As she straightens, the grass rustles behind her. She turns to find Hiro clambering off of Baymax's back. The pair of them are already armored, as Hiro needs the handholds on their suits to ride through the air without falling off.

Now, Hiro stares at the facility, his expression unreadable. "It gives me the creeps," he says at last.

Gogo follows his gaze, and she somehow understands what he means. " _Krei_ gives me the creeps," she says. Abigail makes a noise that might have been a chuckle, and Gogo remembers herself. "Sorry," she adds awkwardly. Talking about Krei is one of the only things that makes her feel weird around Abigail, whose no-nonsense, blunt temperament usually meshes well with Gogo's sarcastic and mulish one. But to be fair, none of them see eye to eye with Abigail on her willingness to forgive some of the people that put her in harm's way and abandoned her.

"Yeah, there's nothing weird that I can see, and we probably shouldn't get too close to the fences," Hiro says, folding his arms over his chest. Keeping within the tree line, he leans back against a massive trunk without taking his eyes off of the labs. "I guess we scope things out a while and then go back?"

Wordlessly, Gogo sits at the base of a nearby tree, preparing for a fruitless delay. The problem with being an _unofficial_ group of heroes is that they don't exactly have the law on their side. Masked though they all are, Wasabi and Honey Lemon—not to mention Baymax—have put their foot down at the idea of breaking and entering on the off chance of foul play, more as a matter of principle than out of real fear that any of them will ever be brought to court for their activities.

"I will scan for anything that appears out of the ordinary," Baymax says helpfully, waddling forward to peer down at the buildings. "Perhaps it will be possible to find something unusual that would allow us to invoke the necessity defense."

Gogo closes her eyes and leans the back of her head against the tree, feeling oddly exhausted.

Baymax hums, his tone puzzled. "I believe that the building's construction incorporates RF shielding material. My scan is unable to penetrate."

Hiro straightens. "What, like...the whole building?"

The robot hesitates, then nods. "It is difficult to say how extensive the shielding is, but I would guess that it is something incorporated into the walls."

"So not just your scans. No outside tech can get through." He says nothing further, but when he glances at Gogo, the expression on his face is mirrored by the one on hers.

"Creepy, okay?" Abigail says. "I'll say it myself."

"It's fine," Hiro replies. "We're here, so we might as well wait a few minutes and see if anything's up. We'll keep you posted."

There are a few long moments of silence. Above them, the leaves rustle gently in the wind, which whips across the hillside and whispers at the edges of Gogo's helmet. Finally, Hiro steps over and drops to the ground beside Gogo, yawning. Gogo hesitates for a second and then elbows him, making a show of pressing the button inside the bottom of her helmet that will turn her transmitter down, allowing her to hear Abigail if she says anything without allowing Abigail to hear _her._ Hiro does the same, eyebrows raised.

"What's up with them?" Gogo asks once Hiro settles into place. "Abigail and Krei, I mean."

Hiro rolls his eyes, pressing his elbows over his knees. " _Something,_ " he sighs. "I actually have no idea. I mean yeah, I spend a lot of time working with her nowadays, but it's not like we're exactly painting each other's nails and swapping secrets."

"That would be _adorable,_ " Gogo smirks, and Hiro shoves her lightly. She leans back against the tree. "It's just weird, I guess. After all his shit. That she still wants to be friends with him. Or more?" she adds, looking questioningly at Hiro.

"I have no idea," Hiro repeats. "I never asked. But I think she just misses him in a way. Even though she's really mad. And I get that. I mean, think about it...if one of you guys did something to me like what Krei did to Abigail, just threw me into something without thinking about my life, I'd be furious. Beyond furious. I probably wouldn't want to talk to you for a while, but I'd also...I don't know. You'd miss the person, right? And if you thought they were in trouble, you'd try to help?"

Gogo grunts. "God, dating's the worst."

" _That's_ your takeaway?" Hiro laughs.

"This is why I'll always be single," she adds with a grin.

Hiro snorts but says nothing. The silence that stretches between them is warm and comfortable. Gogo's eyes drift to the distant lab, a looming black shape in the night. Most of the windows still glow with dim fluorescent lights in spite of the hour, likely as a security measure, and the atmosphere is serene. Peaceful.

"It's not so bad, is it?" Hiro asks suddenly, frowning down at his knees. Gogo blinks, trying to follow his train of thought. "Patrolling with just the three of us, I mean. It's not the best, but...we could maybe get used to it?"

Gogo lets out a long, slow breath. "Yeah," she says at last. "It's just Big Hero 3 doesn't have the same ring to it."

Baymax, who has up to this point been standing erect to peer out at the facility, now turns toward them. "Big Hero 3?"

Hiro cringes. "Yeah, it's just…a thought," he says lamely. "You know, if anything ever…"

Baymax tilts his head in a curious, puppy-like fashion. "Human friendships appear to be borne of layered bonds created over time through common interests, time spent together, shared triumphs and burdens, and similar elements. It is my belief that your bonds with your friends are particularly strong, having strengthened over time. It would be unusual for your group to separate at this juncture, would it not?"

"You'd think, wouldn't you?" Gogo grumbles.

The robot turns away. "In addition, I believe that there is a complex mixture of gases and fine particles rising in the distance, though the breeze is blowing them away from us. The darkness has also made it difficult to recognize a mild orange light on the opposite side of the building, perhaps almost too faint for the human eye to perceive."

It takes both of them a few seconds of staring to work out Baymax's meaning. "Smoke?" Hiro asks at last, jumping to his feet.

"Why didn't you say that first? Is it a fire?" Gogo adds, rising at his side. Now that she looks, _really_ looks in the direction Baymax faces, she can make out something just barely brighter than the glow of the lighted windows, though the hulking structures of the buildings between it and them makes it hard to see anything more. "Something really is up. Come on," she says, slipping her wheels onto her armored boots.

Gogo takes the slope down toward the chain link fence, intending to follow it around to the back of the building. It's only when she looks back that she realizes Hiro and Baymax haven't moved. The robot is staring at his charge. Even from here, Gogo can see the tight grimace on his face.

_Oh,_ she realizes. _Crap. I forgot._

Hiro has a thing with fire. A completely understandable thing. Hiro has a thing with fire like Abigail has a thing with sunsets, a thing that makes her freeze in place or grow suddenly anxious and sick. Nut jobs, the both of them—but part of being a team is that their worries become Gogo's as well.

"Hey," she says quietly. He pulls his eyes away from the distant glow to meet hers. "You wanna sit this one out? I can just check it out, and Baymax can be my backup."

She knows he'll refuse and isn't surprised when his face hardens. "No. I got this."

Baymax nods once, satisfied. "Be sure to switch your transmitters on. They may be needed."

Gogo and Hiro obey wordlessly, Gogo speeding off into the night as Hiro takes to Baymax's back. "Abigail," Gogo grunts into her transmitter. "Looks like you were right."

Nothing but static. "Abigail?" she tries again.

"Think maybe there's more to this building than a shield against scanning. We'll have to get her back later," Hiro replies from above. And then: "God, this looks bad."

For Gogo, it takes longer to see what he means. The facilities encompass multiple buildings, and as its only after a minute or two on her wheels that she realizes that the blackness beyond the facility is not the natural darkness of the night but a curtain of thick, black smoke. The breeze pulls it steadily away from her, out toward the rolling hills of the prefecture.

She rounds the corner to find that some of the lower windows on this side of the building are broken, their glass scattered on the ground, smoke pooling out of them as if they are breathing mouths.

It's only when she recognizes Hiro's presence at her side once more that Gogo realizes she's stopped to stare. "I do not advise entering this facility," Baymax says firmly from behind them. "It would be better to wait for emergency responders."

"Baymax—" Hiro begins, turning, but Gogo sees something moving in the smoke.

"Look!" she says, pointing. It's a person, she realizes as they look on. Someone clambering out of a broken window—and two or three more—and there's someone else bursting from an emergency door. Their clothes are grimy with soot, and they appear to be coughing violently as they help each other up and stumble away.

"Hey!" Hiro calls, hurrying forward. "Hey, are you guys okay?"

Far from looking reassured at the arrival of help, the group looks stunned and even frightened at Hiro's approach, though it's unlikely that they can make out more than a dark figure in the night. Faces pale, they dart away more quickly than Gogo would have thought possible given their coughing fits.

"Hey, we're not—" Hiro breaks off with a sigh. Gogo walks to his side. "I think that was Krei's personal assistant, from before," he tells her, squinting off into the night. "The one with the dark hair. I wonder if that means Krei's here, too."

"When we flew overhead, the area at the center of the facility appeared to be more heavily reinforced," Baymax said. "I believe that is likely where the more private area is."

"I thought we were supposed to be waiting for EMS?" Gogo asks, surprised.

"Yes, but the chances of either of you adhering to that suggestion seemed slim," the robot replies, turning to her. "Was I incorrect?"

"No," Hiro says, grinning, and then he sobers. "Especially not if there are more people in there. Is the structure okay for us to go in?"

"The structure in this area is sound. Though the smoke is thick, the fire does not appear to have reached this section. I will continue to monitor the strength of the structure as you move forward. However, I feel obligated to suggest that at the very least you cover your mouths and noses with fabric and stay low to the floor. This will limit the amount of chemicals you inhale, though it won't offer protection from the super-heated gas."

"Got it, buddy," Hiro replies, rapping his knuckles on Baymax's arm. It takes some maneuvering, but he reaches down the neck of his armor to pull up the fabric of the black shirt he wears beneath.

Gogo does the same. "Ready?"

"No," he says at once. "But let's go."

The air is foul; Gogo can smell it as soon as they enter, even through the fabric covering her nose and mouth. The room around them, a wide area with an open floor plan and a main desk that may have been intended to house reception attendants, is masked by whorls of smoke that shift slowly as they move forward in the silence. At Gogo's side, Hiro mutters something about upgrading their suits for oxygen recycling.

"Let's try here," Gogo says, voice muffled. She points to a set of double doors behind the front desk, and Hiro and Baymax follow her lead.

"Now that we are inside," says Baymax, his voice as calm as ever, "I find that I am able to scan for human occupants—perhaps because the walls are designed to block only external scans." He hums thoughtfully for a moment as Hiro and Gogo, both crouching as they move through the corridor, squint into the darkness.

"Is that a light up there?" Hiro asks Gogo. It takes her a moment to see what he means through the smoke, and for a moment, she fears he might mean the light of flames. Instead, she sees a patch of white falling across the ground just ahead. A light is on in one of the rooms. Gogo nods and approaches it, half of her mind still on Baymax.

Hiro must be distracted in the same way. "Baymax?" he prompts after a moment. The robot rarely takes more than a few seconds for simple processes like this, but Gogo imagines Krei's security may be giving him some trouble. "What's up?"

"The resultant scan seems...incorrect," Baymax says uncertainly, but a loud crash comes from the lighted room before them. Hiro and Gogo double their pace to round the corner.

Inside, they find a trio of scientists, if the long, soot-scarred lab coats are anything to go by. They, like Hiro and Gogo, press fabric to their mouths, but a longer exposure to the toxic airborne chemicals has left them all choking and gasping for breath. None of them appears to notice Hiro and Gogo, who still crouch low to avoid the smoke that rolls overhead. Instead, they dance about the room in frantic motions, scooping up an array of foreign instruments and labware—digital testing equipment, gauges, long coils of computer wires, optical drives, nanostorage systems. The environment may be foreign to her, but Gogo recognizes this behavior from SFIT: there are always some students who, in spite of the obvious health risks involved with getting too close to an uncontrolled chemical spill or other disaster, recklessly rush in to try and save projects they've been working on.

Gogo has no tolerance for this behavior at SFIT—she's been known to bodily yank her idiot classmates away from danger—and she finds suddenly that she has no tolerance for it anywhere else, either.

"What the _hell_ are you doing?" she barks, surprised by the ferocity in her own voice. At once, all three lab techs look up at her, no doubt startled by the sudden appearance of strange interlopers silhouetted before the black curtain in the doorway behind. "Get out of here!"

As if her words have broken some sort of spell, they stumble toward the door to the hallway—equipment still cradled in boxes or nestled under their arms—and hurry away, choking all the while.

As the sound of their coughs grows distant, Hiro turns to her. "Ugh. _Scientists_ ," he says, voice muffled.

She cracks a grin under her hand and looks at Baymax. "So. The scan?"

"I do not believe it was incorrect," he begins. "I have performed additional scans to confirm the results. However, these results are...unclear."

Hiro is already moving into the hallway, looking toward the reception area. The scientists are gone, lost to the blackness. He starts in the opposite direction. "What's that mean?"

"Scans indicate that there are a few hundred people present in the facility. But their mental scans...suggest unusual mental processes."

"Sounds like people freaking out in a fire," Gogo says slowly as she and the robot follow Hiro. "Right?" As they move, they glance into the other rooms lining the hallway, but all of them are ill-lit or completely dark, and none show signs of life.

"It is possible," Baymax begins. He hesitates.

"But you think it's something else," Hiro says without turning.

"I have not yet constructed a theory."

The clear, reinforced plastic of her helmet has been covered in a thin film of soot. As she trails behind Hiro, she wipes it off as best she can with her glove, but her hands are thick with ash as well. "Crap," she mutters, and then, "Well, no matter what they're thinking about, it would be good to get them out of here. Then you can ask them all the questions you like."

"Which direction are they in?" Hiro asks. They have come to a fork in the corridor, one path narrowing to a long, windowless hall and the other barred by a thick pair of doors.

Baymax considers this. "It is difficult to say for certain," he replies, "but it seems that most of the presences are concentrated toward the center of the facilities." There is a long pause while he decides the most likely way forward; Hiro and Gogo shift impatiently at his side. "This way," Baymax says at last, moving toward the double doors. There is a keypad at waist height on the left side, and for a moment, Gogo fears that it will require a code that none of them possesses. But Baymax places his palm on the keypad, and the doors whirr open.

"Handy," Gogo says, punching him lightly with her fist as she moves past. "Let's see what we've got."

.

Gogo has limited experience with fires.

When she was much younger, a severe fire had eaten away the row of condos near her apartment building in Setsuzoku; even with the worst of the blaze over a block away, she had woken coughing and confused. She recalls the foul smoke lining her nose and mouth, lingering in the air for days afterward.

From San Fransokyo's winter bonfire festivals, Gogo is familiar with fire's radiating warmth, which spreads so invasively that standing near one for too long seems like facing the surface of the sun. At SFIT, which is no stranger to dangerous student experiments, Gogo expects to see an unplanned fire at least once a month on average; lab protocol is very strict for this exact reason, and the jolt of initial panic she always feels when someone's experiment goes wrong is always mitigated by the fact that they all know what to do _._ The fire extinguishers come out, the sprinklers come on, the fire-stricken area of the lab is sealed off, and everything is controlled.

At first, this fire seems like it might be the same—distant, controlled. She, Baymax, and Hiro move slowly through the near-empty facilities, working their way in the opposite direction of the handful of frightened technicians who hurry past them in the chaos. Aside from the first group, they don't have to coerce anyone else to leave, though they do have to help direct a pair of women who have gotten turned around in the heavy haze, and they break a window to allow Baymax to fly a man weak with smoke inhalation to safety.

But then they reach the flames.

They're relatively small at first, bursts of white-hot fire clinging to the drop ceiling tiles or working their way across tables laden with paperwork. Whatever caused the fire, it must have been something explosive: the farther they go, the more they find fire spreading through destroyed walls or crumbling stairwells.

"We need to turn back," Baymax protests again. The three of them are crossing a wide, open area that may once have been used as vehicle storage. Cinders rain down on them from above, and a glow from the doorway on the far wall suggests heavier flames further on. "The integrity of this section does not seem sound."

Hiro coughs, glancing at Gogo. "Maybe he's right," he says. "We haven't found anyone else in this direction, and we don't even know if Krei's here. Not that he's the only one we should be getting out, but…"

"But Abigail," Gogo finishes. Neither of them has stopped moving toward the door.

"Yeah. It's just I don't think we'll be all that useful if we're out of commission ourselves."

"All those people, though. Baymax, you said there were a few hundred."

That hesitation again. "So it appears. As I said, their mental processes—"

Aware of the passage of time, Gogo cuts him off. "We haven't seen that many. So where are they? If we could just get to them…"

Through the grime on his helmet, Hiro looks doubtful. "Yeah, okay. A little farther, but if we don't find anyone else in like three minutes, we turn back."

The next room is ablaze on one end, but they sidle through, still choking in the foul air. Another empty room, and then another. Before Baymax has time to properly convince them that the structural integrity of the building ahead is too weakened to continue, the fire is suddenly all around them.

Gogo's blood boils, or at least that's how it feels. The light scars her eyes—or maybe it's the smoke—so she has to blink them furiously to see. Her lungs are dry, her throat so brittle that her choking coughs seem to crack something in her chest.

Without trying to speak over their own gasps for breath and the roar of the flames, they turn around by mutual agreement to work their way back the way they came. Only it isn't that simple: somewhere in the fire, they must have been cut off, or else they've lost their way.

Baymax is saying something to both of them, but a haze weighs heavy on Gogo's mind, the smoke finally filtering into her thoughts, and she can't make it out, even through the transmitter. For a few absurd moments, she wastes time wondering whether Baymax feels the blaze at all, and how hot the flames would have to be to actually damage him.

And then Hiro is before her, grabbing her arms, maybe saying something as well. He shakes her. "Keep moving!" he says weakly, and Gogo wants to tell him _No shit,_ but her tongue is too heavy.

Baymax half-drags, half-carries them along, trying to find a way out, but Gogo isn't much help. As her vision starts to fade, she sees something odd: through the light of the flames are dark shadows, tall and thin and with human faces. They step forward as though rising from the smoke, like hellish creatures with brooding stares.

Gogo hopes Baymax has the good sense to throw both of them over his shoulder and get them out before the monsters eat them. And then she's gone.

.


	2. Baymax

 

Even with Baymax's expansive vocabulary, there are still a few words from Hiro's lexicon he has yet to understand. He can pull up their definitions from his database and recite them at a moment's notice, but his limited experience gives him only the most clinical understanding of their meaning, especially when it comes to popular slang terms. Among them is the word  _creepy_ , which Baymax is beginning to feel fits this situation.

The robot's lack of understanding is not for lack of trying on Hiro's part. Baymax's charge has made sure he understands the literal definition of the word:  _causing an unpleasant feeling of fear or unease._ But it's the context for those feelings that stump Baymax. Hiro has tried to explain that while the abandoned student hospital near the university campus is  _creepy,_ but the newly bankrupted hostel on the corner lot is just  _sad._ The balding stranger who shouts insults and waves a baseball bat on his front porch is  _creepy,_ but Mrs. Matsuda's insults and seeming ignorance of normally accepted standards for personal space is  _funny._  Exasperated, Hiro had once told Baymax that "creepy is just something where you know when you see it." (Except that Baymax obviously doesn't.)

He understands it now. Something about the three robots approaching them—for they are clearly robots, though it takes Baymax a moment to grasp this—causes an unpleasant feeling of fear and unease in Baymax. Or it would have, had he been able to experience emotion as a human does.

Their pale, flawless faces are perfect replicas of the smooth, contoured skin Baymax expects of a human being, but in the glow of the fire, it becomes clear that they lack the minor imperfections or even pores that distinguish them as real, living beings. Despite this, they are somehow convincing, or at least they might be were the rest of their bodies crafted with such attention to detail. Instead, the human faces form pale masks on otherwise grey and obviously lifeless bodies. The material of their chest cavities is clear enough for Baymax to see strips of wires and control boards laid out neatly where their ribs and spines should be. Their expressions are devoid of emotion as they approach, dark eyes staring intently at the two humans Baymax cradles, Gogo in his arms and Hiro leaning more and more heavily against the robot's side as he succumbs to the heat.

Baymax still doesn't know if he understands the definition of  _creepy_  as Hiro puts it, but Baymax thinks the anxiety settling over him may be a match for the word. There's something disquieting about the mixture of humanoid features and robotic function, or maybe the vague sense that the three of them could easily overpower him, weighed down as he is by the limp bodies of his companions and with flames at his back. Baymax doesn't understand why their unexpected arrival has caused him such concern, but it may have something to do with the ambiguity of their purpose; they approach calmly and surely and without a single word.

But the most unsettling thing of all is the fact that they possess the strange consciousnesses that had so troubled him earlier, a vaguely humanoid thought pattern with significant enough distortions to make Baymax uneasy. If Hiro had asked him earlier what he might have thought of an advanced robotic system with humanoid processing capabilities, Baymax might have been interested. Now, he finds it grotesque, unnatural. Almost frightening.

They pause about three feet away, possibly sensing his uncertainty; the ambiguity about the presence of a threat makes him wonder whether he should shield his friends from harm. Instead, wishing Hiro were able to offer guidance, he says politely, "It is important that my friends receive medical attention. Please stand aside so I can move them from the building."

They regard him coolly for a moment, and Baymax decides that if they don't—or won't—speak to him, he will be forced to fight his way out, leaving the decision as to whether they are friends or foes for later, once Hiro and Gogo have returned to themselves.

Instead, the robot in the middle, whose stature and facial features appear vaguely male, says, "We're under the orders of Alistair Krei, and his order was pretty much 'do no harm.' So we'll get you to safety if you just follow behind us." The robot jerks its chin toward Hiro and Gogo. "You got those two on your own?"

Assistance would be helpful; however, Baymax finds himself unwilling to hand either of his friends over to these strangers. A moment of adjusting puts Gogo over one shoulder and Hiro over the other. Not exactly ideal for opening their airways or from keeping them low and out of the worst of the smoke, but Baymax has no alternative. As it is, it is inevitable that both of his friends will suffer minor lung problems. "I am prepared to follow."

The robot nods, and the three of them turn as one to lead Baymax through the smoke, though not the way he'd meant to go. "We must return to the exterior of the building—"

"That's not what we were told," one of the robots interrupts, this one with more rounded features. They have not stopped moving, and after an instant of hesitation, Baymax follows them. "There's a medical bay further this way, if you're trying to get them help."

"I do not understand," Baymax returns, hurrying behind them. "The facilities are damaged."

"For now, yeah," the robot agrees, "But it's being dealt with." This time, the robot barely turns its head to speak to Baymax, who finds that their humanoid statures make them as fast as his friends are—though Hiro and the others usually keep his size in mind. Baymax has never been a particularly fast walker, due in large part to his girth and the size of his legs, and he has to work to keep up with the foreign robots.

"The authorities have arrived to put the fire out?" Baymax asks, following them down a narrow corridor. The flames here are not as bright and the structural damage not as severe as the rooms they are leaving behind.

"No. It's being taken care of internally," replies one of the robots. Baymax is unsure what this means, but as they pass a series of darkened rooms, his optical feeds register movement from within. Other robots, all of them with the same pale masks for faces and grey bodies, are working to put out the fires, throwing a strange white powder that causes the flames to flicker and die. Overhead, the sprinkler system begins to flicker on and off sporadically, as if someone is trying to jump start the system.

"Did you start the fire?" one of the robots asks Baymax suddenly, drawing his internal processes away from his optical observations. Her face—Baymax believes the facial features are meant to be female, but he supposes there is no easy way to be sure—morphs for the first time into an expression Baymax recognizes: suspicion.

"We did not," he replies immediately. Overhead, the sprinklers finally stay on, pouring a spray of water that quickly drenches them all. "A friend of ours was monitoring the facility when it became apparent that the alarm had been set off. We wished to be sure all was well."

The suspicion takes a moment to ease away completely. "Nice thought," she tells him at last. "But we have it under control." Baymax finds the sudden appearance of emotion on her face fascinating: never before has he known a robot to be able to portray so keenly the feelings that Baymax once thought were reserved strictly for human use. To have the ability to convey expression through the manipulation of pseudo-muscles is an advanced form of technology Baymax has never known. If he were more capable of human sentiment, he might have felt jealous.

The water soaking through his friends' clothes is making both of them steadily heavier. Baymax is incapable of feeling fatigue, but the added weight reminds him that they need attention urgently, and moving too quickly from severe heat to cold water may not be best for their recovery. Still, the robots appear to be guiding him toward the more secure interior of the facility, where Baymax still senses the presence of other robots like these. It seems that his best option is to hope the medical facilities are close at hand.

Without Hiro present to guide the conversation, Baymax finds that it falls upon him to move the discussion in a beneficial direction. "I assume by your question that you believe the source of this fire was not accidental?" he asks.

"We doubt it," the round-faced robot replies. His eyes slide sideways to glance at Baymax, a gesture Baymax knows in humans to indicate wariness or distrust. In robots, he does not know. "Hard to be  _sure_  who's responsible, but no matter the cause, we've been told not to harm any strangers in the building." This last part is said with a twist of the lips that might indicate displeasure.

Hiro or Gogo might have known what to say to smooth away any suspicion, but Baymax is uncertain what could help. All he has is his curiosity, and so he asks, "Are you normally instructed to harm people within the building?"

"No. We don't hurt anyone unless told to do so."

"By Alistair Krei?"

"Yep."

Baymax hums as he processes this, an oddly human habit he has noticed himself doing more and more frequently. "What is your role in this facility?"

"We do what Alistair Krei tells us to," replies the female-faced one, and her tone is curt, indicating a displeasure that even Baymax registers.

He remains silent as they move out of the area drenched by sprinklers and into a dry, undamaged series of dark and windowless rooms. Baymax's night vision compensates for the lack of light until they step through a corridor and into an area that has retained its power. At the end of the corridor, the robots pause long enough to use the controls on a keypad to unlock the door.

They step into an open testing floor rimmed by empty workstations. All of it is lighted and sleek and smooth, completely untouched by the flames, and Baymax wonders whether this is by design: perhaps Krei had crafted his laboratory with more expensive, flame-retardant materials in the heart.

"Baymax." The robot's aural processing software recognizes the voice as Krei's even before he has a chance to turn and see the human. Krei looks immaculate, his clothes as polished as if he had just stepped from the stage of one of his product demonstrations instead of being hidden away in his burning facility. He also looks shocked, almost hesitant. "It  _is_ Baymax. Correct?"

"That is correct," Baymax replies, but Krei has barely paused to let him speak. Instead, glancing at Hiro and Gogo, he waves his hands at the three robots who had guided them in.

"Stretchers," he says firmly, his voice resounding through the empty room. Over his shoulder, Baymax can see other robots, similarly mechanical and pale-faced, stepping from shadowed doorways. "Bring them to the medical ward. Now." Then, to Baymax: "I assume they'd rather have this done here than in the hospital. At least here, they can keep their identities a secret, if they want."

The robots move wordlessly as instructed; a moment later, stretchers are procured from somewhere. Hiro and Gogo, both unmoving, are transferred onto them. They breathe shallowly but consistently, and Baymax hopes that they will experience no respiratory complications.

The dynamics of all of this throw Baymax off-kilter, the way Krei's face jumps from emotion to emotion without allowing the robot adequate time to analyze and process them, the way the robots around him wear no expressions at all. But if there's one thing Baymax does understand, it's a situation involving medical need. Hiro and Gogo are both unwell, and that's enough for Baymax to prioritize his healthcare software above all else. Without a word, he discards all attempts to analyze the situation in favor of waddling beside the robots without a word.

"You didn't cause the fire," Krei says, suddenly appearing beside him. Baymax isn't sure whether it's meant as a question, or whether Krei expects a response. His visual processors are currently focused on Gogo's chest as he monitors her breathing, but they catch the intent look on Krei's face as well. The robot decides that the tech giant is likely waiting for a reply.

"We did not," he states at last. Krei doesn't look particularly surprised.

"Hmm." They step into a room whose fluorescent lights cast such a strong glare on the white walls that Baymax needs a moment to refocus. Like the other rooms in this area, it is windowless and pristine, with an open blueprint and floors of grey vinyl—but Baymax instantly recognizes it as a hospital ward. Lining the walls are a series of stasis beds and dimmed state-of-the-art med screens, all with standard dividers for privacy. Baymax feels instantly at home here, more so than he had among the rooms of smoldering foreign electronics, and as soon as Hiro and Gogo are gently deposited onto two of the beds, he steps between them to continue monitoring as the beds whirr to life to scan their vitals.

"I assume..." Krei begins slowly, leaning a shoulder against the wall near Gogo's med screen. "You're telling the truth, then. At least, the truth as you understand it. Unless you'd been previously ordered to lie about it, which seems unlikely...I imagine neither of these two predicted you'd be left to fend for yourself in this situation."

After a moment, Baymax decides Krei is simply  _thinking aloud,_ as the expression goes. He wisely keeps to himself the fact that Hiro has programmed him to—and is offering additional instruction in—lying at will. Hiro has notified him in the past that many people find it "disturbing" that a robot would have this ability, and it seems unwise to bring it up now.

"Hiro. And...Gogo?" Krei asks. Baymax says nothing, uncertain. Their identities are meant to be a secret, and he is unsure whether he should indicate anything in the affirmative now that Krei has guessed. Krei seems to understand his predicament, because the man smiles. "It would have been wiser to use code names when using armor," he explains. "The day they saved me, when they spoke to each other, I heard their names." He pauses. "I've been...well, not monitoring you, exactly, but keeping up with the news about your... _team_."

Krei might have said more, but Baymax doesn't hear him. The readings on the med screens, slightly more detailed than the ones his mobile health scans will allow him to perform, have finalized at last. They indicate a state of respiratory distress for Gogo as well as swellings of the airways for both patients. In an attempt to compensate for their injuries, both of them have unconsciously begun to breathe more rapidly to increase the amount of oxygen in their bloodstreams—nothing too serious, and nothing that will warrant unconsciousness for much longer.

Still, wall panels at the head of each bed slide away to provide oxygen masks; with great care, Baymax removes Hiro's and Gogo's helmets to place the masks on their heads, careful to avoid moving their swollen throats too much. Krei looks on in fascination.

"So you're a member of their team. Big Hero 6," the man states slowly, suddenly closer. Baymax continues to ignore him. "But you obviously have healthcare programming as well. What kinds of initial processes do you have? And—there's no obvious interface, but I'm assuming you have one?"

With these questions, Baymax has a little more help. In the past, Hiro has cautioned him against providing information as to his programming or internal systems. Hiro himself avoids giving out personal information while they are undercover as Big Hero 6, but with Baymax, there is more to it: software hacking is a problem that continues to worry Hiro, though he's taken great strides to prevent it.

"Well?" Krei asks imperiously.

Baymax is unaccustomed to being spoken to in this manner; Hiro and the others have always treated him as a companion rather than a servant. He tries to compensate by adding an additional layer of agreeableness to his voice. "I have been forbidden to provide such information."

Krei nods slowly, unsurprised. "Well. I'm considering adding additional programming to my internal team as well," he says finally, resting his back against the wall again to peer out at something past Baymax. Without looking, Baymax knows he must be staring at the strange robots from earlier. "Your functionality is fascinating," he adds, turning to Baymax again. "I've been trying to develop more humanoid robotic servants. There's nothing comparable on the market right now, which...well, I guess  _you_ probably are aware. Robots do menial tasks like  _construction._ Cleaning. Warehouse management. Farming. Banking.  _Healthcare,_ " he adds, waving his arm dismissively. Baymax makes no movement, but he is nearly overcome by the irrational desire to argue.

"But no one wants a robot in their home, not the ones like we have now," Krei continues, leaning against the frame of Gogo's bed. Baymax wonders if he is meant to be included in this number, and just how little Krei thinks of his mental processing abilities. "For all the stories and the hype, we've never been able to grow the market for home robots. Consumers surprised us, you know—they just weren't buying. And not because the robots weren't useful in their own way. But they're bland and boring. And  _robotic._ My plan is to change that, to make robots that are humanoid enough to be in demand for more than just repetitive, number-driven tasks. Robots that can make their own informed decisions, perform endless types of tasks instead of specializing in one field. Do anything asked of them by their owners."

_Owner_ is a word Hiro has never used to describe Baymax, and he's surprised at how strange the word seems to him. He knows other robots report to  _users,_ and it isn't as though Baymax thought himself wholly separate from that—he is very much aware that Hiro is both his programmer and charge—but somehow, the thought of more high-tech and humanoid robots that might compete with him puts him on edge.

He is jarred from his thoughts by the sound of coughing. On the table, Hiro is waking in a panic, struggling to remove his mask. Baymax leans over and touches his shoulder lightly; Hiro's eyes focus on his robot, and he noticeably relaxes. "Baymax?" he says groggily, voice muffled by the plastic of the oxygen mask. "What…?"

"You have inhaled a great deal of smoke. Your airway is swollen in response to the chemicals in the air. With rest, you will be alright."

Hiro nods slowly, his hands still grasping at the mask. "Wanna take this off," he mumbles. Now that he is conscious once more, there is little Baymax can do to enforce the health habits Hiro needs, so he says nothing. Hiro gingerly removes the mask. "Gogo's okay?"

"She is," Baymax confirms, trailing off as Hiro gently shakes his friend's shoulder. Gogo wakes with a start, and her sudden inhalation sets off a series of coughs.

"The hell?" she says at last, ripping off the mask. Her voice is hoarse. As one, their eyes fall upon Krei, whose expression is almost amused. "What the hell? The fire…" she trails off.

"With the help of Krei's security team, you were able to be successfully removed from the worst of the danger in time," Baymax tells her reassuringly, though he is not sure what information she seeks. "Your remain in a state of mild respiratory distress. I would advise against sudden or intense physical exertions for some time."

Hiro is looking around the wide, empty room. "This is...are we still in the same building? It's like there wasn't even a fire."

"Not here," Krei explains, waving his arm dismissively as though the fact of the fire's existence is a nuisance. "The core of the facilities have heavy fire doors. All of my invaluable work is here."

"But your employees…"

"They're aware of proper fire protocol. They know what to do. And my  _security team,_ " he says this with an amused smile, looking at Baymax as if they are sharing a secret, which Baymax supposes they are, "is helping."

"Not in time for an emergency team to get here," Gogo mutters, pausing to cough into her elbow. "Some of those people were pretty bad off when we got to them."

"And I thank you for that," Krei replies diplomatically. "Although there will be no emergency team. It's part of the protocol. We're completely self-sufficient here."

"What are you talking about?"

"Let's just say I feel strongly about our right to privacy, and I'd rather not have first responders nosing about and asking questions later on. The alarm systems trigger internal security teams only. I'd have to manually request an external team."

"You're saying that the police aren't notified immediately? But Abigail—" Hiro begins, and then he seems to think better of it, shooting a surreptitious glance at Gogo.

For the first time, genuine emotion seems to seep into Krei's expression, a mixture of pain and something that Baymax can't place. "Abigail sent you here?"

Gogo bites her lip, obviously unsure how much their friend would want Krei to know. "I guess she's been monitoring the building. Just in case."

Krei nods slowly. "In case of another accident," he replies bitterly. Baymax has never gotten the sense from Abigail that this is the reason for her surveillance, but Hiro and Gogo say nothing, and so Baymax follows their lead. "I've learned from Silent Sparrow," Krei says awkwardly, a note of defensiveness in his voice. "The project was a failure; investors disappeared—no one wanted to touch portal technology after the accident. The company has had to move on to other projects. The building was completely shut down. Though I understand it's had some new tenants recently," he adds, fixing his eyes on Hiro, who stares back unblinkingly. Krei clears his throat. " _This_ building is well-protected from accidents."

"It doesn't seem that way," Gogo replies belligerently. "Looks like your team caused another accident tonight."

" _Internal_  accidents," Krei says at once. "I should have said  _internal_ accidents. What happened tonight was...unexpected, to say the least."

"What do you mean?"

"The fire wasn't an accident. It was arson."

"Arson?"

"We're doing good work here," Krei says at last. "But it's the kind of work that scares people. Advancements in technology always do. We must have had, three or four times, people picketing here about what we were doing at Silent Sparrow, even though the proceedings were meant to be secret. There were threats, that kind of thing. And it hasn't gone away."

"So, what...you're saying someone is trying to destroy your work?"

"That's the best guess. Maybe more than that, too—it's fairly well known that I tend to work into the night with a more private team. Maybe they thought if they could get into the heart of the building, they could take care of things once and for all."

Hiro coughs. "You don't seem all that scared," he observes.

Krei shrugs. "Not much they can do. The facility is protected. And my team is here to keep us safe."

"Well, tell us this. What exactly is going on in here that an outsider would be willing to burn the place up?" Gogo asks.

At this, Krei looks into the room from which they had come. As if on cue, the trio of foreign robots approaches them. Hiro and Gogo turn with mild interest, and then Hiro's eyebrows rise.

"Sir?" The female-looking robot says.

Krei shakes his head, addressing Hiro and Gogo instead. "This is what we're working on. The most humanoid robots currently available."

"Most humanoid?" Hiro murmurs, slipping from the medical cot and onto the floor. "Can I…?"

Krei nods, and Hiro approaches the robots as easily as he might have approached Baymax, who must quash the urgent and irrational urge to grip his charge by the shoulder and pull him back.

At first, his face is impassive as he circles the three robots, occasionally bending to inspect seams or to peer through the translucent interior to check the wiring. After a moment or two, however, his eyes slowly narrow into a squint, and he begins to look intrigued. "What kind of material is this?" he asks. "It's hard to make out, but they're polymeric...and interlocking, aren't they? For flexibility?"

"The inspiration was natural. Fish scales," Krei explains, looking pleased. "As for the construction—well, I can't say  _too_ much, but it's a self-healing, supramolecular material with anti-penetration qualities. Flexible enough to bend without breaking, and resilient enough to stand up to anything."

Hiro's low whistle confuses Baymax for a moment until he pairs it with the raised eyebrows. He's impressed. "Smart," he murmurs. "Baymax's skin is only somewhat resistant to damage—since his purpose is more to be huggable than to be durable. That's what the armor's for." He reaches out to brush a hand over the material of the foreign robot's arm, and Baymax once more feels the irrational urge to tell him not to. There is no logic behind it, and the robot wonders where the sentiment comes from. Hiro drops his hand, looking up at Krei. "A little tougher than I'd expect from a commercial bot, though. Are these military?"

Krei shakes his head adamantly. "Not at all. I just finished explaining it to your robot, as a matter of fact: we're just following the market, and the market wants residential robots. Even if it's a need they aren't yet aware of." His smile here is probably meant to be charming, Baymax thinks.

Hiro grips the nearest robot's wrist gently, turning it in the same casual way he has a thousand times before with Baymax to inspect his seams or to look for potential damage. This robot, however, jerks the appendage away violently, an expression of annoyance crossing its pale face. Hiro steps back, startled, and the quick inhalation sets him off into a fit of coughing. It isn't the dramatic occurrence Baymax had originally feared, but this subtle one may well have been an explosion. Such a display of defiance is virtually unheard of among functional robots, as far as Baymax is aware.

"You can stop touching me now," it says sullenly. "I'm not a  _toy._ "

"Sorry," Hiro says at once, clearing his throat, although he still appears confused.

"What the hell?" Gogo interjects slowly, taking a step closer to position herself at Hiro's side. "I don't think I've ever heard of a robot programmed to be...grumpy."

"I'm not fucking grumpy," the robot says, at the same time as Krei replies irritably, "It's not  _supposed_ to be."

Silence. "Bug in the system?" Hiro asks finally.

"Something like that."

There is an odd moment of quiet in which the robot folds its arms over its chest, and its expression is as close to glaring as Baymax has ever seen a robot get. Its counterparts behind it have moved closer in an oddly reassuring way. Baymax has seen similar behavior in the bar fights they have occasionally been called to break up, fights in which human allies cluster together on either side, as though forming small armies. Presently, everyone in the room has arranged themselves into these types of small armies: the three robots stand facing Gogo, Hiro, and Baymax, who stare back in wary confusion. Krei, neutral, frowns at them all.

"That was pretty complex behavior to program," Hiro says at last. There is an odd tone in his voice that even Baymax can't decipher. "Never seen anything like it."

"Thank you," Krei replies, although Baymax isn't sure Hiro had meant it as a comment, just as an observation. "I've done a lot of work on these."

"Can I ask what kind of coding?" Hiro says finally, his voice polite. "The emotional mimicry is spot on."

"I'm afraid it's classified until the project is in its later stages," Krei says kindly, a winning smile on his face. "You understand."

The statement sounds logical to Baymax; after all, Hiro has forbidden him from revealing the details of his own programming to anyone else, and for very good reason. Krei seems to have even more reason to be secretive, as it is in his best interest financially to keep the details under wraps. However, Hiro and Gogo, both of whom are more familiar by a great degree with the nuances of human behavior, harden their expressions in nearly indiscernible ways; had Baymax not been so familiar with the study of their mannerisms, he might not have caught the the fleeting frowns.

Hiro, at least, visibly relaxes after a moment. "Still impressive," he says finally, turning back to the robots, whose posture remains unchanged. "So...you're going more for the droid market, then. With the humanoid…" he gestures vaguely with his hand toward the trio in a way that seems to mean  _all of this._ "It'll be cool to see. Most of the droids I'm familiar with are one-task wonders. Can't really think through complex processes, and definitely can't emote like that."

The tone of fascination in his voice is enough to make Baymax pause. Certainly  _he_ can't emote in the same way as the robots have.

"So the fire," Gogo says impatiently. "You're saying people broke in here to set the place on fire because of  _them?_ "

"From what I've gathered, it's the best guess. I haven't exactly had the opportunity to sit down to chat with them."

"What can you tell us about them? You know who they are?"

Krei looks at Gogo appraisingly. Recently injured or not, Gogo is capable of affecting a fierce, determined look. Baymax finds it easy to recognize now: the furrowed brow, grit to the jaw, haughty stare.

"My understanding is that it's a group of luddites," he says at last. "They protest technological advancements, saying we're taking things too far, going in a direction that's unnatural. The word is that they branched off of the Earth Liberation Front a while back, but their ideals have grown pretty different. Nowadays, they call themselves Technotage. You might have heard of them on the news in the past few years."

"Yeah," Gogo replies slowly, frowning. "Didn't they…I think they destroyed a factory that was making new drones."

"Geoengineering, too," Hiro adds. "They shut a place down about a year ago. Or at least they claimed responsibility for it."

"And their latest fear is AI technology," Krei replies.

"How do you know it's them?"

"Nothing official yet, but there have been other incidents in the building. Damage to some of our systems, evidence of break-ins. Around two weeks ago, I  _did_ contact law enforcement—a first for me, I might add—to have an investigation done. All signs point to them, especially now that they've updated their online propaganda to go into detail about their stance on artificial intelligence technology, stating that what we've created is too advanced, that we're messing with living consciousness, something we shouldn't be messing with."

"But they're not—" Gogo cuts herself off, her eyes sliding over to the robots and then to Baymax.

"Alive? No," Krei agrees. "But for some people, it seems close enough that it doesn't matter. And some people take the horror stories of apocalyptic science fiction to heart. Their worries are unfounded, of course—as with any of our research, we're careful about all we do."

Hiro frowns thoughtfully. "There must be a way to make them stop," Hiro says.

Krei shakes his head. "They have no leader," he explains. "No formal hierarchy. They operate in secrecy, with multiple cells around the world. There's no tracing their finances; they're completely self-funded as far as anyone knows."

Gogo and Hiro are silent, and Baymax tries to imagine what must be going through their minds. "An invisible enemy," Hiro says at last. He is rubbing his throat, which must still be bothering him.

"Not quite. The police were  _relatively_ helpful," Krei says grudgingly. "They have some idea as to the location of Technotage—nothing they can act on without more clear evidence, but enough to convince them that there is a distinct possibility that one of their bases of operation is in the dregs of Setsuzoku, in the station near the expressway overpass. That's not to say that it is truly there, or that that particular cell can claim responsibility, but it's a start, if nothing else."

"The overpass, huh?" Gogo asks, eyes wary. "Around Greenwood?"

Krei looks up. "Are you familiar with the area?"

"Somewhat," Gogo replies noncommittally. Baymax refrains from mentioning that Gogo is practically an expert in all things pertaining to the Setsuzoku area.

Krei eyes her for a time. "It would be helpful—" he cuts himself off. "It is perhaps unfair of me to ask this, and given our past history, you have every reason to refuse. But from all of the news reports, I get the impression that your aim is to be...well, maybe 'vigilantes' is too strong a word. But surely helpful to the common citizen, if nothing else—and you've already made a point of helping tonight. So I feel obligated to ask for your help. It seems almost as if you were meant to come here."

Gogo and Hiro exchange meaningful glances—or at least Baymax assumes they exchange some sort of meaning, but their message may as well have been heavily encrypted. "Help how?" Gogo asks warily.

"Nothing overly difficult. Just...perhaps a patrol in this direction every now and then, to keep an eye on things. The androids will be more than enough to keep an eye on things from inside, and they should be sufficient to take care of any issue inside the building, but they are restricted to the interior. It would be helpful to have eyes on the outside as well—"

"We can't," Hiro interrupts.

Gogo glances at him in surprise. "We could."

"No, I mean— _we_  have the time, for sure," he adds at once. This is certainly true: Hiro, a freshman, and Gogo, a junior, have much more free time than the other three on their team, all of whom are currently swamped by their senior theses. Hiro gives his friend a sheepish look. "But it isn't just the three of us on the team, and...you know how the others are about group decisions. Especially…"

Gogo sighs irritably, but she looks back at Krei. "We can't add an extra patrol," she agrees, shrugging one shoulder. "But we spend time in Setsuzoku every now and then. If we happen to hear anything interesting…"

"I'd appreciate it if you'd let me know," Krei replies evenly. "Thank you."

Hiro says nothing, and Baymax has a hard time deciding whether he agrees with Gogo or not. Eventually, the silence becomes long and uncomfortable, until Gogo begins to cough into it.

"But you must be exhausted. And—well, your robot did an excellent job of first aid, but it would be wise for you to rest."

"Yeah, I think it's probably time we left," Gogo replied.

"Can I offer you a ride back?" Krei says politely. "I imagine it might not be best to exhaust yourselves further after your injuries."

Gogo does not reply, only pulls her helmet on.

"We'll be alright," Hiro replies. Baymax is glad for this: he isn't sure how fully he trusts Krei, and he's satisfied that Hiro and Gogo likewise appear to have their misgivings.

"Then let me show you out."

They walk a different way than they had come, down well-lit corridors untouched by flame. The clean, windowless rooms might very well have been in another laboratory altogether, one that had not been the target of an act of terrorism. They are silent as they go, and Baymax is thankful, at least, that the trio of robots does not follow.

Krei leads them through a last door that opens into the dark of night; it has only been a short time, but the world somehow feels very different than they had left it. Gogo and Hiro murmur respectful goodbyes to Krei, who thanks them once again for their aid, and then they are off.

Baymax feels better once Hiro, appearing dazed, has clambered onto his back and they can jet away into the night air. Below, the lights on Gogo's bike thread toward the winding road back to the heart of the city.

Once they have left the perimeter of Krei's facility, a burst of static cracks along their transmitter. From the way Hiro winces, it is too loud for his ears. "Guys? Guys? Are you back? What's going on?"

"Sorry, Abigail," Hiro replies, sounding as alarmed as Abigail does. "Didn't mean to worry you. The place had some way of blocking transmissions."

"You're okay? Honestly, I almost called the police—I probably should have, as soon as all your stats went offline, but I figured it was just a side effect of the place, and then the system logged you back on, so—"

"No, it's fine."

"I don't know what good the police would have done anyway," Gogo interjects. "Krei doesn't seem to be too friendly with law enforcement these days."

"Krei?" Abigail says, flustered. "But—you spoke to him? What did he say? What happened? Are you okay?"

"We're okay," Hiro replies. "Mostly, I guess."

"Things went south," Gogo adds. "And by 'went south' I mean my hair better not be burned because I literally just dyed it again."

"Okay. So  _what happened?_ "

"It's a long story," Hiro replies, and something in his voice sounds very tired. Gogo must register the same warble of fatigue. She picks up the story from there, speaking in a low voice in the dark of the night, the dozing Hiro an unmoving and heavy weight on Baymax's back.

.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Soooo four months later, here's part two! Apologies for the super long delay - I got the chance to move to a different country, and it's kind of been a whirlwind! I was not aware before, but moving is definitely not for the fainthearted :/ Now that I'm settled, the rest of the chapters should come more quickly.
> 
> Please leave a comment on your way out to let me know what you thought!


	3. Wasabi

 

As Wasabi pulls an updated report on the photon movement of his plasma shield, he wonders if he should be insulted that Gogo and Hiro still think they're fooling everyone.

It's a Friday afternoon, one of the warmest ones in the year so far and a rare moment in the team's weekly class schedules in which everyone is free at the same time of the school day. Once upon a time, they might have gathered for a quick patrol or a snack at Lucky Cat, but nowadays, with Wasabi, Honey Lemon, and Fred scrambling to finish their senior theses before the end of the year, most of the team's breaks are spent in the school lab. Hiro and Gogo typically commiserate by puttering around on their own class projects at the same time, though at a noticeably less harried pace than their teammates.

Today, despite the hour, the five of them are the only people using the lab, and that makes the distraction of Hiro and Gogo all the more obvious. The pair of them had come in later than usual, coughing in a way that makes Wasabi think of the lifelong smokers that haunt the front porches of the houses in his neighborhood. Both of them have red-rimmed eyes, their shoulders slumped in fatigue, and Wasabi can't be sure, but he thinks Gogo is hiding a slight limp. They wave off all concern and claim to have caught a cold since yesterday, but how they'd have both caught something that had progressed to such a severe degree in just a few hours, Wasabi can't imagine.

Still, after brushing off all questions, the two of them settle down to work, Gogo at her usual workstation near the door and Hiro right across from her at the far wall.

Wasabi probably wouldn't have been able to tell they were lying if he didn't know them as well as he does, and even then it's hard. Hiro and Gogo are great liars: Gogo is as flippant as usual, her typical abrasive manner toned down slightly for those she considers friends. She smirks at Wasabi's complaints about misplaced tools and listens patiently to Honey Lemon's exuberant rejoicing over the successful tweaks to her tensile stress project. After a time, she even drifts over to Fred, who is sprawled out across the beaten sofa in the open floor of the room, drawing him into a debate about the narrative strength of the story arcs of various superheros. The move might have seemed to many like a casual one, but Fred's frustration over the wording of his thesis has grown obvious, and Wasabi's pretty sure she meant to distract him from his frustration. If it weren't for the fact that her attempts at nonchalance seem a bit too forced, Wasabi might have bought it all.

Hiro's feigning isn't quite so masterful, and it doesn't help that he seems to have gotten the worst of the coughing fits between the two of them. Even so, Wasabi imagines that he'd still be a credible liar to anyone unfamiliar with his personality. Like Gogo, he smiles and jokes as usual as the morning passes, and if he could stick to that behavior alone, he might have been able to convince even the team. But when no one's looking, he has the tendency to get lost in thought, chin resting on his fist as he watches the branches of the blossoming cherry tree outside scrape against the windowpane. The look on his face is distinctly guilty.

Tadashi used to have almost that same look. Back before any of them had met Fred and Gogo, it had just been the three of them Wasabi labels even now as the original team: him, Tadashi, and Honey Lemon. And Tadashi was the troublemaker of their trio, not that it said much considering their mutual tendency to be straight-laced and studious. His types of mischief included pranking their rude substitute teacher with a small and well-timed explosion during a high school chemistry class, or sticking one of the school's paper mache mascots right near the classroom window so that the giant raptor head poked through just near the teacher's desk. He'd always been the one most likely to dive into a little mischief, which had always been punctuated by a guilty look—though he'd worn his with a smile. Wasabi had always worried when he saw that look.

Worrying is Wasabi's job, after all. It always has been, if only because the rest of the team doesn't do enough of it. Still, Hiro and Gogo are playing it well enough that Wasabi might have almost thought they were telling the truth. Under other circumstances, anyway.

Except that Baymax is a dead giveaway.

For all of Hiro's and Gogo's posturing, their weak point is the robot. Baymax has never successfully learned to lie in anything more complicated than a game of Go Fish, and if it's possible for a robot to wear his heart on his sleeve, this one does.

Wasabi usually starts to worry around the time Baymax clams up. At the Lucky Cat Cafe, silence would have been pretty normal. There, the robot often entertains himself by studying the gamut of human behavior and the interplay of emotions. But here in the lab, he normally spends his time documenting the mechanics of everyone's projects, making suggestions for improvements, and asking a hundred thousand clarifying questions about everything from the direction of their projects to the stupid jokes they're cracking.

Today, though, the robot is watching everyone from the corner of the room near Hiro's workstation, silent and brooding like Mochi a hot summer day. Wasabi counts himself lucky that Hiro and Gogo haven't realized Baymax is the main giveaway in their little web of lies, or else they'd probably have coached him to act more normally.

"So what do you think?" Honey Lemon asks quietly, sidling up to his workbench. She lowers her head, leaning over the table. She must have done this strategically, Wasabi thinks, because her curtain of blonde hair perfectly shields her solemn face from the rest of the team. It probably looks as if she's looking for a tool to borrow rather than talking to him.

Wasabi grins. "Having fun?"

"Shh. I'm being sneaky," she laughs, but her expression quickly sobers. "So. The verdict?"

"The verdict?" Wasabi echoes, yanked from his thoughts.

Honey Lemon runs her fingers across an extension clamp, holding it up as if to inspect it before laying it back in place. She looks at him pointedly. "Do we believe they're both just sick?"

Wasabi drops the printouts atop the scribbled pages of his notebook. "No," he says. "We don't."

"Didn't think so."

"What do you think's really going on?" Wasabi asks. She shakes her head.

Out on the middle of the lab floor, the others are taking a well-deserved break. Fred laughs at Hiro's impressions of classic versus reboot Godzilla; Gogo makes snarky criticisms from her perch on a nearby crate. "Normally, I'd bet you they were out on the streets," Honey Lemon says. "Gogo has that kind of smug look. She was weirdly smart alecky over breakfast this morning, too. But with the coughing…"

"Yeah, what's that about?"

Honey Lemon shrugs. "It's weird. Can't be a cold—what are the chances they'd both suddenly get sick the same way overnight?"

"Baymax is weird, too."

"So weird. He's not even doing his whole health thing; he's just..." She glances toward the group. "Something's up."

It makes Wasabi feel better to hear her say it. He's been accused of paranoia before, of being a little too watchful. "Yeah. Okay," he says at last, slowly getting to his feet. "Let's find out. I'm going in. Back me up?"

She smiles. "It's not an interrogation, you know."

"Might as well be," Wasabi grumbles under his breath. She shakes her head and follows him toward the others, all of whom are too wrapped up in their debate to pay him any mind. For a minute, Wasabi just looks at them, at the easy camaraderie flowing between them as they joke, and he wonders if he's wrong about everything.

Then Hiro's laugh turns into an uncontrollable cough. He bends double at the waist, mouth pressed into the crook of his elbow to catch the worst of it, and a sheepish look creeps over Gogo's face as she pounds him on the back.

"You okay, Hiro?" Honey Lemon asks once he's regained his breath. He doesn't seem to trust himself enough to speak, but he flashes her a thumbs up.

"Hey," Wasabi begins, somewhat awkwardly, "what's up with that, anyway? The coughing fits?"

Gogo shrugs. "Came down with something. You know," she replies, her tone flippant.

"It's not just the coughing, though," Wasabi says cautiously. "You're kind of...stiff. Like you've been hurt." He doesn't phrase it as a question, but they both know he's grasping for answers—and there's the guilty look again, this time on both of their faces as they carefully look away from each other.

"Gogo's limping," Honey Lemon adds, confirming Wasabi's suspicions. "Is that a part of your cold?"

"We were sparring," Gogo retorts, smothering a cough. "It's not a big deal. Just got a little carried away, that's all."

"Sparring," Wasabi says flatly, letting his tone of voice tell her he doesn't believe it for a second. "Late last night. While you had colds."

Honey Lemon nudges him with her bony elbow. "What's really going on?"

"Nothing's going on. It's not like we're dying or anything—so we came down with colds, and we're a little bruised."

"You swear you weren't out on patrol alone?" Honey Lemon asks, her expression caught somewhere between pleading and demanding. "Or out on the streets at night—Hiro, you promised your aunt the bot fighting thing was over, and Gogo, you said the same about the races."

Neither of them says anything, and that's enough of an answer for Wasabi. It's not like Hiro and Gogo have never slipped up before, or that they don't understand that their friends are only worried for their safety. But at all of the other times, he, Cass, and the others have caught them in the lie only by chance, usually a slip of the tongue on their part—or more often on Baymax's part. Wasabi can't remember a time when they returned so obviously hurt.

Wasabi almost asks another question, but when he glimpses the tense, almost mutinous look on Gogo's face, he stops himself. The room has grown weirdly tense in the past minute, with Hiro stiff at Gogo's side and Fred and Honey Lemon looking on with troubled expressions. They've all argued over this before, can probably recite their dialogue by heart, but this is different. It's tense in a way Wasabi doesn't understand, the air fraught like before a storm.

"Ah!" says a voice from behind him. "I thought I'd find you here."

Wasabi turns to find Dr. Tabesh, the absolute worst person to enter the conversation right now. His thesis advisor is a tall, lanky woman in her early sixties with sharp bones and a sharper smile. She nods at the others, all of whom she is currently teaching or has taught in past physics and engineering classes, and to Wasabi's relief, the strained atmosphere dissipates almost instantly, everyone shuffling in place like schoolchildren caught in mischief.

If Dr. Tabesh notices any of this, she doesn't mention it. She opens her mouth to speak, but Wasabi knows whatever's coming out could mean disaster, so he cuts her off as politely as he can. "Hey, Dr. Tabesh. I meant to swing by during your office hours later," he tells her. "I know we have a lot to talk about, so I didn't want to bug you about it randomly during the day."

She catches on at once. "Right," she says shrewdly. "Well, in that case, do you mind if I steal you away into the hall for a minute? I know you're working, but it can be brief."

He agrees, and the others, used to the occasional professorial interruption, return to their own projects. With more grace than her bony figure belies, Dr. Tabesh leads him out into the hallway.

As soon as the doors slide closed behind him, she whirls around, eyebrow already raised. "You haven't even told your friends?"

Wasabi shrugs helplessly. "Honey Lemon and Fred know—or at least they know I was going for this. The others don't really...but I will. Eventually. It just never seems like the right time. We're always working on our projects, or editing our theses, or…" Or fighting. He sighs. "And I guess I just don't know how they'll take it. New London's pretty far. And five years is a long time. Maybe it makes sense not to tell them unless I'm sure."

"That's what I'm here about," she replies. "I just wanted to check in with you. It isn't as if the deadline to accept the scholarship is coming up soon. It's only that…" Here, she hesitates.

Wasabi understands. "You don't know why I haven't just accepted it yet?"

"You worked on the application for months. And with the scholarship...well, you know better than most how few people get a scholarship to St. Kakichi University. Their master's program is extremely elite. I know what it means to you that they're offering." She shakes her head helplessly, and somehow the gesture makes her bony figure appear to teeter in place. "One of my colleagues there reached out to me today, wondering if they were losing you, and I didn't know how to respond. I just don't understand. Help me understand."

Dr. Tabesh says this gently, almost pleadingly, in a way that makes Wasabi feel a whirl of guilt in his chest. Dr. Tabesh knows more about Wasabi's life than anyone outside of his circle of close friends—not that it means much, given how private Wasabi is—and she's worked closely with him on this since his sophomore year. She, more than anyone, deserves to know why Wasabi hasn't yet accepted the scholarship he's toiled so hard to secure.

Except that he himself isn't sure why he's hesitating.

The scholarship is a lifesaver, hands down. Without it, Wasabi's education would have ended here at SFIT. He loves working with plasma, learning about its limits, and St. Kakichi's has the foremost program in the world for those kinds of studies.

It's not a future he would have imagined for himself a decade ago. Wasabi's childhood had been one of neglect, and he'd only managed to escape by legally emancipating himself when he was fifteen. He'd been smart enough, even then, to earn a meager living through odd jobs, mostly through fixing things, and to pay rent for his own place. Only Tadashi had known all of it, or as much as Wasabi had been willing to say: that he was only at SFIT thanks to his scholarship, that he'd dreamt of going to St. Kakichi ever since his dad had told him he'd never make it. That Wasabi would do anything to get there.

At least, that had been the plan. Now, he's not so sure.

"I don't know," he says honestly. "I don't understand it myself.

Dr. Tabesh gives him a long look that he can't interpret, but at last she nods her head. "I know what this means to you, Wasabi. And you've earned this. More than any student I know. I can't make your decision for you, but you know I like to stick my nose where it doesn't belong," she says, smiling. "And I'd never forgive myself if I didn't at least advise you to accept the damn scholarship. Because I think you'll never forgive yourself if you don't."

Wasabi frowns. "Yeah," he says. "I know. And I'm going to accept it. I just…"

"Tell your friends," Dr. Tabesh tells him firmly, setting a hand on his arm. "It's a big decision, and I understand that. Talk it over. You know where to find me if you need me as well."

"Okay," he replies.

Her frown lines ease away, and she pulls her bony elbows in close. "I am going to lose so much sleep over you, aren't I?" she asks wryly as she makes her way down the hall. Wasabi doesn't know whether or not he's meant to respond. He moves back toward the lab.

Through the frosted glass window beside the lab door, Wasabi can just make out a rounded white shape that reaches about his height. He taps on the glass, activating the sensors to turn it translucent.

"Psst," he says, tapping again. This time, Baymax turns to look at him. Wasabi presses a finger to his lips and makes a "come here" gesture, both signals even Baymax is familiar with. The robot looks back toward the lab, and for one second, Wasabi thinks he might say something to alert Hiro anyway, or that he might be too obvious about his departure. But the robot only waddles toward the door, which slides open for him to step through.

"Are you well?" Baymax asks at once, tilting his head in concern.

"You tell me," Wasabi says. It's his customary reply, though he doesn't give the robot enough time to perform a scan. Instead, he jerks his head away from the door and walks a little ways down the hall. After a beat, he hears the robot follow.

"Is this a surprise for Hiro?" Baymax inquires.

Wasabi snorts, turning around. "Something like that. Look, I just want to know what's up with him. With both of them. Something happened last night, didn't it? Those two don't just randomly have twin colds."

The robot shifts in place, a behavioral habit he picked up from Hiro a while back. Nowadays, Wasabi isn't sure the robot even knows he does it. After a few moments in which Baymax looks as uneasy as it is possible for a robot to look, Wasabi tries again. "Okay. We've been through this before, man. They asked you to keep it quiet, right? And...well, you're not programmed with the Hippocratic Oath or anything, but I know you try to follow it, and there's that whole privacy statement or whatever. But before even that, you're supposed to be looking out for Hiro's best interests. Does Hiro always know what's in his best interest?"

Baymax stops shuffling. "He very often does," he replies diplomatically. "But not always."

"And sometimes, does Hiro know something's not in his best interest and do it anyway?"

"It is...not unusual."

Wasabi waits for a few beats. "You don't have to tell me everything," he cajoles. "But give me a something to go off of, at least. Like last time, when they tried to get to some kinda custom bike race thing down on the coast and you started dropping hints about them needing gas money or whatever." When Baymax hesitates still, Wasabi adds, "Put it this way: I don't even need you to tell me about their health. And I already know they were up to something. I just need to know what."

This isn't exactly true—there's a part of Wasabi that's still hoping the two of them are really just sick. But the bluff pays off, because Baymax's head bobs once in agreement. "I do not believe this was a wise decision," he begins, and Wasabi's heart sinks, "but Hiro and Gogo and I spent a fair part of last night doing the activities they have previously been forbidden to do, bot fighting and street racing."

Wasabi groans, running a hand over his face. "Right. Of course you guys did." He sighs, bracing himself. "Okay, what happened? Did they get into a fight again?"

"Yes, but not in the way you are most likely thinking. Abigail reached out to Hiro with information about a possible break-in, and—"

"Whoa, whoa, Abigail?" Wasabi asks. "She only calls when we're on patrol. Or—at least that's what we agreed. Why would she even be awake and checking the scanners at that time?" It's a stupid question, and he shakes his head. He knows Abigail's had a hard time adjusting to the psychological aftereffects of her rescue, and he's heard her talk of insomnia more than once. "Okay, and why the hell would she be pinging Hiro or Gogo in the middle of the night like that? And directing them to go out on a call without the team all of a sudden?"

Baymax shifts again, uncertain.

"Oh no," Wasabi says slowly. "This wasn't a one-time thing, was it?"

"No, but none of the other incidents have so severely impacted Gogo and Hiro's health," Baymax replies. "The other two incidents were false alarms. In addition, Abigail is very conscious of their safety and only asks them to patrol if she is fairly certain the incident is a routine investigation and that they will come to no harm."

"Not certain enough this time," Wasabi growls. He doesn't know how to bring this up with Abigail, who's been a godsend in coordinating their patrols ever since she and Hiro cleared the air between them a while back. Plus, she's got like eight years on him. And the structure of their team is still a fragile thing—there's no clear leader, and they mostly make decisions by squabbling and debating in a democratic (if juvenile) fashion. But if anyone's in charge of the patrol aspect of the team, it's probably Abigail, who coordinates most of their actions on the job.

That's a problem for later, Wasabi thinks. "Okay," he says, trying to make sure the robot doesn't misinterpret his gritted teeth as a sign that he's angry at Baymax. "Well, talk to me about what happened. Or if you don't feel okay doing that, at least tell me if anything happened last night the team needs to know."

Baymax hums. For a moment, Wasabi thinks he'd better rephrase the whole anything the team needs to know part of his statement so the robot knows how to answer, but then Baymax starts to talk.

.

By the time Wasabi returns to the lab, he's livid and sick with worry. He's familiar enough with Gogo and Hiro's defensive habits that he knows he can't let that part show, so he reels it in and tries for something gentler instead.

The whole stopping-of-illegal-nightly-activities thing is a frequent source of tension in their group. Has been for ages. A part of Wasabi knows he should at least be glad that Gogo and Hiro sneak out together now instead of separately, but they still need to stop. It doesn't help that Wasabi and Gogo butt heads over everything. Where Wasabi's all about control and a place for everything, Gogo works best with chaos and turbulence.

Really, Wasabi thinks, Tadashi had been the only thing holding them all together. He and Wasabi and Honey Lemon had melded well since their first class together in freshman year, but bringing wildcards like Fred and Gogo into their group might have been impossible without Tadashi's endless good humor and calm. It's weird to say it, because Wasabi's come to care for Gogo like a sister, to care for all of the team like family, but he also realizes that sometimes he doesn't know how to act around them anymore. Wonders if they even would have all been friends without Tadashi. Wonders how he's supposed to keep them together now that Tadashi's gone.

From the sudden quiet and the way all eyes fall onto him, Wasabi realizes he must be doing a terrible job of keeping calm. Behind him is the faint, rubbery squeaking of Baymax as he waddles forward, and Hiro sighs. "Baymax," he groans.

"It's not Baymax's fault," Wasabi says grudgingly. "I pressured him."

"What's going on?" Honey Lemon asks before Gogo turns her withering glare into a retort.

"Apparently, Abigail sent Gogo and Hiro out on a patrol yesterday evening," Wasabi replies, folding his arms across his chest, "since they were already out doing their usual."

Honey Lemon grimaces. Fred drops into the grungy sofa in the middle of the floor. "Dude," he says, looking betrayed. "I thought you guys promised you were gonna stop. And you even patrolled without us?"

Fred probably doesn't know it, but his genuinely plaintive expression is probably one of their best weapons against Gogo's anger. Wasabi watches as she deflates, frowning. "We didn't promise. We just...look, none of this is as big a deal as you guys are making it out to be."

"Not a big deal?" Wasabi can't help but raise an eyebrow. "You guys had to be dragged out of a burning building yesterday. Krei's burning building—which, really? You didn't think to mention that? And I mean, Abigail was online, sure, but she doesn't exactly count as backup! She's too far away if anything goes south. And from what I heard, you don't even plan to take a day to recover. You're just diving into the next thing Krei asked you to do, because he's so trustworthy now, which is running around in the sketchiest area of town—"

"Oh my God, everything's the sketchiest area of town to you," Gogo grumbles.

"Gogo, you have to know this isn't cool. There's no way you guys can go out again tonight."

"I know this is news to you, but you can't tell us what we can and can't do, Wasabi," she retorts hotly.

"I'm just looking out for you."

"No one asked you to," she gripes. Behind her, Hiro frowns and shoves his hands in his pockets, agreeing with her by association. Wasabi wonders at his friend's wounded look.

"Okay." Honey Lemon interrupts before Wasabi can reply. She faces Hiro and Gogo but holds a hand out to Wasabi as if they're sparring and she means to hold him off. Wasabi rolls his eyes but sits down on his desk. "Okay. Let's all just…" she gives a frustrated huff. "Look, before anything else, are you guys hurt? Seriously, you've been coughing like crazy, and you're limping, Gogo."

Gogo's too stubborn to reply, but Hiro pipes in. "We're okay. Baymax scanned us. No complications or anything, as long as we—" He cuts himself off. Wasabi thinks he knows what Hiro would have said.

"As long as you rest up?" Honey Lemon asks gently. They don't answer. "It could have been really bad, couldn't it? If you weren't dragged out...Baymax dragged you out, I guess?"

Neither of them meet her gaze.

"Guys. You could maybe have died," Fred says suddenly, sitting up straight. "That's not cool."

"Can you guys at least admit that what you did was super dangerous?" Honey Lemon adds. "Tackling burning buildings on your own?"

"It wasn't like we meant to do it when we started out," Hiro replies. Gogo is scowling still, but she's less likely to shout at Honey Lemon than Wasabi. "It's just that Abigail called us to check out Krei's labs. She thought it was a false alarm. We didn't think we were really gonna get into anything. It was just for her peace of mind."

That makes it slightly better, at least. "But c'mon," Fred says. "You guys know how easy it is for stuff to get out of control. Happens all the time, even when we're all together."

"Yeah, the thought crossed my mind," Gogo replies grudgingly. "But what were we gonna do? Say 'No, Abigail, we're not gonna check it out...so hopefully nothing bad is going down?'"

Honey Lemon sighs exasperatedly. "I don't know. Maybe. I just wish you would have called us." And there it is: the patented Tone of Disappointment. Hiro and Gogo shrink down as surely as if one of their own mothers had scolded them. It's never been enough to stop them altogether, but guilt is a pretty good tool for getting them to slow down, anyway. Knowing better than to solicit a promise they'll ultimately break, Honey Lemon moves on. "Alright, how likely is it that one or both of you is gonna try to sneak out tonight?"

The pair of them blink, surprised, but say nothing.

"Pretty likely," Fred replies with a frown.

"Okay," Honey Lemon says. "Fill us in. We're coming with you." Beside her, Fred nods.

"Wait, wait, what?" Wasabi interjects. "We're not—we can't just—"

"If Hiro and Gogo feel like it's important enough to go, we should go together. Yeah, they messed up, but they did it to protect someone. Which is what we do." She turns to Wasabi. "Olive branch," she whispers.

"This sounds like a terrible idea—"

"Team vote!" Fred exclaims. "All in favor?"

Unsurprisingly, everyone but Wasabi raises a hand, though Hiro and Gogo exchange bemused glances as they do. Even Baymax, after a brief hesitation, lifts his arm into the air. Traitor, Wasabi thinks.

"Great," Honey Lemon chirps. "Let's do it. Tell us what we need to know."

.

Gogo wins the fight over who drives Wasabi's car, if only because it made zero sense to have her grunting directions at Wasabi the whole way over. She drives like a maniac, maybe out of spite, speeding through intersections when the light turns yellow and ignoring the existence of her turn signal. Wasabi grimaces but says nothing, because even he (sometimes) knows when words will only make things worse.

Wasabi's only driven through Setsuzoku Heights during the day, and it's always seemed quiet. People tend to keep their heads down around here, lingering in the shade of refueling stations and watching the streets from inside buildings swallowed by algae and rust. Tonight, though, it seems like all of San Fransokyo has arrived expecting a street party, at least in a couple-block radius. Traffic is terrible, mostly because of the half-drunken ravers who mingle on the asphalt, their sweaty faces warmed by the glow of car headlights. As they roll slowly through a crowded train underpass, the windows of Wasabi's car rattle to the thrum of electronic music.

He takes it as a bad sign when they have to resort to on-street parking several blocks away from their destination. Gogo's given up getting any closer, and she hops out of the driver's seat, slamming the car door shut behind her.

Wasabi pulls himself out of his seat and glances around. "We're leaving it here?" he asks.

Hiro blinks. "We gotta park it somewhere."

"Yeah, but…" Wasabi gestures ineffectually in a way he hopes means do you see where we are? Across the street is a hunched apartment building with bars on the windows. Next to them is a tiny, overgrown lot with abandoned vehicles peeping out of the grass like dark animals. Wasabi knows his car isn't anything special, but he spent ages saving up for it.

"No one's stealing your car right now," Gogo snorts, reading his mind. She moves into the crowd as Fred and Honey Lemon follow. "You drive a compact SUV."

"What's that supposed to mean?" Wasabi says hotly, but he stops when Hiro shoots an amused look across the street. A few custom cars are lined up near the curb, their owners chattering proudly with bystanders or leaning possessively across gleaming chrome hoods.

"Point taken," Wasabi grunts, appeased.

Gogo leads the way. The filtered neon lights of bars and strip clubs fall across them as they wade through, keeping to a straight line as much as possible. The noise makes talking difficult, and Wasabi finds himself recoiling from the humid grime and coarse shouts of the crowd.

Ahead, Hiro shoves Baymax to the front of their line, and trailing behind robot's girth makes it easier for them all to push forward. The stench of alcohol and piss is heavy in the air. Gogo laughs at something Hiro says, but Wasabi's too far back to make it out. For the life of him, he can't figure out what draws the two of them here. He'd thought he might understand, that coming here might help something click, but he only feels wary and uncertain.

Before Wasabi can take any more time to study them, Hiro and Gogo slow to a stop on the sidewalk. Wasabi realizes after a moment that they mean to enter the seedy-looking building to their right—The Penthouse, Wasabi reads on the half-faded sign out front. An ancient security camera droops from the gutters, overlooking a trio of teens smoking something sour and foul. Wasabi can't make out much through the gloomy windows, but the shouting suggests some kind of squabble.

"We're gonna stick out like a sore thumb," Gogo complains to Hiro, smirking back at the others. Wasabi might have argued, but he already feels it: somehow, the stares that slide right off of Gogo and Hiro cling to the others. Baymax probably isn't helping—the robot often attracts curious stares—but Wasabi has the feeling they'd still be somehow marked as outsiders even without him. It can't be their clothes, since they're all wearing the same casual wear they'd had on earlier. Looking at Honey Lemon, Wasabi realizes it must be something in their expressions, in the anxious way they scan the area as if they've been thrown to the wolves.

Fred, at least, looks more curious than anxious, lazily spinning around to take everything in. "Is that gonna be a problem?" he asks Gogo.

"Nope," she says at once, "but maybe let me do the talking." Then she pivots on her heel and leads them into The Penthouse.

"If it's a bar, Hiro probably shouldn't—" Wasabi begins, but Hiro is inside before he can finish. Wasabi grumbles, and Honey Lemon shrugs amiably and follows him inside. The air is oddly musty, and Wasabi waves smoke from his eyes to see a line of bar stools and several booths, mostly occupied by glowering men griping to each other in small huddles. Gogo slips through them all to lean over the counter, murmuring something to the bartender that Wasabi doesn't catch. The girl, a short blonde with sleeve tattoos, nods at Gogo and Hiro before jerking a finger toward the back of the bar. Gogo cranes her neck to see, apparently finding whoever she's looking for, as she makes her way in that direction.

Hiro catches the bottom of Wasabi's t-shirt as he starts to follow her. "Let's let her do the talking, remember?" he says at Wasabi's questioning look. "She knows Bug better than anyone."

In the distance, Gogo approaches a tall man who somehow reminds Wasabi of a spider. He gives her an odd grin, and they bend their heads together.

"Huh," Fred says, looking back and forth between Hiro and the doorway. A bouncer leans against the wall just inside the threshold; they'd passed him without noticing. "They just...let you in?" Fred asks. "You don't exactly look like you're eighteen and up." He's got his arms folded across his chest, but his eyebrows waggle playfully.

Hiro shoves him, but he doesn't look at Wasabi or Honey Lemon. "They know me around here is all," he explains. "It's hard not to get recognized when I'm with Baymax all the time. Some of the bot fights happen in the alley out back, and people...y'know, congregate in here. When there's downtime, they'll serve nachos or potato skins, and they don't really care who buys that stuff as long as it gets bought."

Wasabi frowns, but he's not sure he wants to pick this fight. Hiro takes advantage of his silence to play it off. "Hey, it's not actually illegal, and aside from the bot fighting, it's not like I'm doing anything risky. We can't all be Mister Responsible here." He grins at Wasabi almost shyly, just to show there's no malice in his words.

Wasabi wants to stay mad at him, at both of them, but it's hard. As always, he feels his resistance slip away in the face of that grin. Behind Hiro, one of the bartenders thumps Baymax cheerfully on the back, and the robot tilts its head and gives a little wave. "Yeah, yeah," Wasabi says with a shrug. "Be cool if you could just pretend you're mature enough to be in college, though." Hiro takes no offense, just shrugging as he presses his back against the counter.

"Holy Red Tornado, they have a trivia night!" Fred crows from behind them, flailing in the general direction of the chalkboard behind the bar.

Honey Lemon pulls him back by the collar. "Fred, we're not coming here for trivia night," she whispers.

"What's going on with you two, anyway?" Wasabi asks Hiro in a low voice, ignoring them both. Now that he's got Hiro alone, he thinks, he's much more likely to get a straight answer. "I mean, seriously. You guys slipped back into this from time to time, but after you got in that fight a few months ago, you swore up and down you'd stop, and I thought it was over...but I feel like every time I turn around lately, you're sneaking out at night and we don't find out 'till later." He pulls away from Hiro to let a trio of half-drunken girls stumble between them. In the sickly yellow light of the lamps, Hiro looks terribly guilty. "You gonna tell me what all this is about?" Wasabi prompts.

Hiro frowns at the floor. "We...well, it's just…" He shakes his head. "It's hard to explain. I don't think you'd get it."

"Try me."

Hiro stares at him doubtfully. If he notices Honey Lemon and Fred leaning in closer to hear him over the clamor of the bar patrons, he doesn't give any sign. "It's just...look, it's really fun. It's awesome. Gogo and me, we were the underdogs at first. Sometimes we still are, but mostly we've climbed our way up to where people actually take us seriously now. We're matched against new people all the time, so, so...it's always a new challenge, right? And it's really hard, and we have to work at it, but bot fighting is fun. Street racing is...well, that part's not as fun to me, but it's fun for Gogo," Hiro grins.

"Yeah, until someone slips up and she crashes into a freaking tree," Wasabi retorts. Out of the corner of his eye, he sees Fred wince. "Okay, harsh. Whatever. But you know deaths still happen in pro racing, not to mention street racing. It takes one second to lose control, and then…"

"She takes care of herself. You've seen her lab work. Airbag jacket, stability control—"

"None of that's perfect. You know that."

Hiro heaves out a frustrated breath, and Honey Lemon sidles closer to take up Wasabi's end of the conversation. "It's not like bot fighting is all that much safer," she reminds Hiro gently. "That fight a few months back, between you and that guy—"

"He thought I was cheating!" Hiro protests hotly. "It's not my fault he couldn't get over himself. And it's not like I get in fights anymore over hustling. People actually know who I am now, so that wouldn't work."

Honey Lemon holds her hands up in the air. "Not to mention that it's illegal."

"Bot fighting is not illegal," Hiro replies, but Fred and Honey Lemon chime in as he completes the statement: "Gambling on bot fighting is illegal."

"But you also do that part," Fred points out.

"It's lucrative," Hiro says cheekily.

Something in his expression, in the familiarity of this argument, annoys the hell out of Wasabi. "We've been having this fight with you for ages, Hiro. Seriously, this has been going on since before Tadashi. What would he say if he saw you still doing this stuff?"

It's a low blow. Wasabi can tell because Fred and Honey Lemon instantly move their attention elsewhere, fidgeting with their clothes or scanning the bar menu. Hiro meets his gaze coolly. "I don't know. He's not here," he says at last. "And it's hard for me to say, because I'm not like him. Or like you. Obviously. Because it sounds like you shared a lot more with him than you do with Gogo and me."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"Dunno." Hiro looks away. In the distance, Gogo and her contact are making their way through the crowd toward them. "The two of us might as well be total outsiders. Just seems like you guys are jumping on our case a lot to tell you everything, but we're kept out of big stuff, like we can't handle team decisions or something."

Slowly, Wasabi draws himself up to his full height. Does he know? Automatically, his eyes go to Baymax, as if looking for clues. But if Baymax has anything to add this time, he doesn't show it; instead, he gives Wasabi an unfathomable stare.

"Besides," Hiro adds before Wasabi has a chance to work out a question that won't give it all away. "You can't knock something 'till you've tried it. And you've never given bot fighting or street racing a chance."

"That's because it's illegal," Fred reminds him kindly.

"Yeah, yeah, I know," Hiro replies with a wave.

"Hiro! Baymax!" A voice calls. Gogo and the stranger have finally pushed their way through the roiling crowd to arrive at their side. Up close, Wasabi realizes the man is even older than he'd originally thought: the greying hair at his temples and the crow's feet at his eyes suggest forties or so. "I suppose I should have known you two would be the friends Gogo mentioned."

"Right," Gogo says breezily. "Everyone, this is Bug. Bug, everyone. You guys ready to take a quick walk?"

She's moving toward the door before anyone has time to answer, Bug at her back. As anxious as Wasabi is to get out of this overcrowded bar, their sudden exit takes him by surprise. "Hold up," he calls to Gogo, and though she doesn't stop, she slows enough for him to catch up to her. "Where are we going?"

"We need to find out more about the Technotage, and Bug's kept tabs on them. He knows the city better than you know your own face."

"That's kind of you," Bug tells her. "If creepy."

"Sooo...who are you again, and how'd you get your cool superhero name?" Fred asks Bug as they follow him out.

"Yeah, but where exactly are we going?" Wasabi asks.

"The Higashi Expressway overpass, just a couple of blocks out." Bug throws over his shoulder. The lot of them slip out of the bar, Wasabi gratefully drawing in a breath of cool night air and hoping to shed the stench of alcohol and smoke as they walk. "Technotage keeps close enough to the city center to come and go as they please, but they prefer to be on the outskirts. Basically like their philosophy," he adds, and Wasabi has caught up with him enough to see him roll his eyes. "They're a fringe group, so they sit on the fringes. I think they like the symbolism there."

Bug ducks into an alleyway between a pair of boarded-up buildings, Gogo close behind him. Tall weeds poke through cracks in the cement, and Wasabi brushes them aside as he passes.

"How d'you know them?" Hiro asks, nearly tripping over a few discarded planks of wood. Baymax catches his shoulder. "Technotage, I mean. When we talked to...well, it sounded like they were kind of...secret?"

"Hm," Bug says, shaking his head. "Not exactly. Or not exclusive, anyway. They don't trust just anyone, for obvious reasons, but it's not as if no one knows they exist. Where'd you get that idea?"

"Oh, just what I've heard," Hiro replies. Wasabi realizes suddenly that they must not have told Bug that source of their information is Krei himself, meaning they haven't instantly put their faith in him. It makes Wasabi feel at least marginally better to know that they aren't spilling everything to strangers.

They clear the smaller buildings and step onto the open stretch of land that houses the mountainous sixteen-lane expressway. It's late, but the roar of car engines echoes overhead, and the residual glow of the solar-powered streetlights bathes the ground in pale yellow. Sitting in the shadows of the roadway is a long building lined in dark windows, its walls and roof patched here and there with corrugated steel.

The field is blanketed by tall grass and wild shrubs, and Bug turns aside and leads them through as best he can. "Let's take the railroad," he says.

"The railroad?" Honey Lemon parrots, shaking mud off of one boot.

Before they have time to question him further, Wasabi realizes what he means. A few yards away lie a set of heavily rusted train tracks. It must have been decades since trains have run in this area, but the heavy gravel and stone ballast has done a good job of keeping the weeds at bay. Bug steps carefully across the wooden sleepers, and they file down the track toward the darkened station looming up ahead.

"To be honest, I wouldn't have expected you guys to be interested in them," Bug says mildly, breaking the silence.

"Why is that?" Hiro asks.

"Well, for starters, Technotage is a group of technophobic luddites," Bug says, grinning. He rubs the side of his face, his stubble making a noise like scraped sandpaper. "And you two don't really fit the bill."

"Neither do you," Gogo replies with a snort. "You said you used to be involved with them?"

Bug shrugs. "Once upon a time, yeah. Some of what they say is valid. I do think we need to be more responsible with how we're using technology. I mean, some of the things we're ok with are pretty messed up. You can implant spy cameras into your eyes now, we're hacking DNA and geoengineering half the planet, and don't even get me started on freaking artificial intelligence—no offence, Baymax."

"No offense taken," Baymax replies mildly, waddling beside Hiro. The robot can't seem to work out how to walk on the train track, and Hiro is holding his elbow to guide him across the wooden planks, giving him the appearance of possibly the least threatening robot in the history of science.

"Anyway, I'm a paranoid nutjob, so it makes sense for me to run with that sort of crowd," Bug continues bluntly. "But they're...paranoid. I mean, even for me. They're afraid of everything. I mean, yeah, the government is almost definitely spying on us, but I don't think they're doing it through our lamps." At this, Bug cracks up laughing, a harsh and feral sound. Honey Lemon and Wasabi exchange a look, but neither Hiro nor Gogo seem to be weirded out.

"I don't get the joke," Gogo points out. She's peering as best she can through the tall weeds, where the building rises out of the grass. Now that they're getting closer, Wasabi realizes that it's leaning a little to the side.

"Ah," Bug wheezes, still grinning. "Right. It's just, they don't even do electricity. No lights, no phones, no...nothing. They don't do plumbing either, but that's just because it would basically cost them an arm and a leg to get that running again." He lapses into silence as the wind brushes his frazzled hair to the side. "They also run a meaner protest than I'd feel comfortable with," he adds, sobering. "Kind of zealots, in a way."

Up ahead, Gogo and Hiro exchange a knowing glance. "What do you mean?" Gogo asks casually.

Bug doesn't answer right away. He's leading their line, and Wasabi can only make out the hunch of his back now, not his expression. "Let's just say that when we start working on homemade explosives, that's where I tend to back out of things."

"They just let you go?" Honey Lemon asks.

"They just let me go," Bug confirms. "They're crazy, but not that kind of crazy. They aren't actually in it to kill people in cold blood, anyway. Sure, they don't think through the consequences of their actions, but they're not trying to be evil. They just want to tear down the technology people are working on. To send a message."

That didn't inspire much confidence in Wasabi. "Wait, but...they were making explosives, and you just left?" he asks, brow furrowing. "Didn't turn them in or anything?"

At this, Bug actually does turn around. Wasabi doesn't know the man well enough yet to read his expression, but there's something like disdain in the twist of his mouth. Then he snorts. "Honor amongst thieves, I suppose," he mutters to himself. Wasabi drops the subject.

They've grown close enough to the building now that it's easy to make out signs of life: neat stacks of firewood are piled on the outskirts of the area, metal bike frames glint in the darkness, and the grass is bent and well trodden underfoot. A smattering of tents dusts the field, some store bought and others fashioned of tarp and wood; clotheslines weave through a series of poles. Wasabi half expected all of it to be grimy and neglected, but the rows are orderly, everything kept with an almost military precision.

There are people around, too, bundled in well worn coats and chattering around fires. Some of them stare in suspicion until Bug nods their way, but no one stops them as they head toward the station doors that gape open in the night's gloom. This close, Wasabi realizes that the train station isn't completely dark: candles glow on tables and in wall sconces, and if it weren't for the tiled floor and walls or the industrial metal beams crossing the ceiling, Wasabi might have thought they'd stepped back in time to a medieval castle.

Seated at tables are people ranging in age from high school to elderly, all of them chattering away as they eat, plates piled with vegetables and some sort of pilled grain. Most of them don't even look up as Bug leads them in. It's uncanny, Wasabi thinks. Too different from the picture of elite, hardened thugs he'd had in mind.

"Wait. Is this a cult?" Wasabi whispers. "Have we just walked into a cult?"

Hiro elbows him discreetly as Bug leans over to murmur to the nearest group. An acne-ridden teen points in the direction of a giant stairwell at the far wall.

"C'mon, she's this way," Bug murmurs.

"That was way easier than I thought," Honey Lemon says. "You didn't even have to...I don't know, infiltrate or go through the proper channels or anything."

Bug barks another laugh. "They run a tight ship, so I guess I see where you'd get that impression. But really they're not all that official. There's a definite hierarchy in terms of need-to-know information, but otherwise they're kind of like a bunch of people who just happen to hang out together."

"I was hoping it would be more secret lab-y," Fred confesses.

"I think we've had our fill of secret labs," Gogo replies.

Up the stairs and around the corner, the crowds thin out. The corridor is lined with open doorways that must once have been offices. Now, they're quiet chambers where people sleep on bundled blankets or murmur in low voices. Bug leads them on. "She's in the main room," he explains, and for the first time that evening, his footsteps slow as he approaches the threshold. Finally, he stops and steps aside. "There's no bad blood between us, really, but this is as far as I go. I don't need to see her again. And I doubt she needs to see me."

"Thanks for bringing us this far, Bug," Gogo says, thumping him on the shoulder. "Appreciate it."

"I'd feel that appreciation a lot more if you'd throw another race or two. Not that last night was intentional, I guess."

Gogo breaks out into startled laughter. "Not a chance," she says.

Bug shrugs with one shoulder and turns back the way he came. After a moment, the rest of them head inside.

The room rises high overhead, one long window spanning the length of the far wall to showcase the constellations of fire and candlelight set in the field outside. The other light, to Wasabi's surprise, comes from the glow of computer monitors. In a past life, the room might have been some sort of customer service center, with four or five hubs of computer terminals bolted to the ground. A few people sift through stacks of paper as they mill about or sit and stare at the blue screens. Wasabi doesn't realize how confused he must look until someone speaks.

"They aren't connected to anything but our local net," a woman explains. She glances up as they enter, her gaze calculating, before turning back to the computer screen. Dark, scruffy black hair frames her oval face, a pair of narrow frame glasses perch on her upturned nose. Something about her is instantly familiar to Wasabi, though he can't put his finger on why. "Not that we need them, but the firewalls are strong enough to keep out God himself," she adds.

"Yeah, but why d'you need so many?" Fred asks. "And no offense, but I thought you guys were like, all technology must die kinda people."

She smiles indulgently. "We get that a lot. I'm sure it must seem that way. But we don't hate technology. We just have a reasonable level of distrust. We have on-site generators, and information collected on the computers here that we control, and the long and short of it is that our systems make sure we don't let anyone else in. In the modern day, that's safety."

Swiveling in her seat, she rests her chin on a fist to stare at them for a long moment. "So. Big Hero 6, right at my doorstep," she says quietly. It takes a second, but a jolt runs through Wasabi, the skin on his forearms instantly breaking into gooseflesh. They aren't in suits.

"Whoa, whoa, whoa," Fred exclaims, lurching back. "No one knows who we are. It's like, the first law of superheroes."

"Don't act so surprised," the woman laughs, glancing back at her computer screen. "We've met before. It wasn't a hard leap."

"Oh my gosh," Honey Lemon says suddenly. "You're—are you Mr. Krei's personal assistant? We've seen you before, at the SFIT showcase."

"Aria Fujita," the woman says as she nods approvingly, and Wasabi can almost see it now. Her hair is longer than it used to be, almost to her shoulders, and he thinks that must be what threw him off. "That was a while ago. Almost a lifetime," she adds. She types something up onscreen, and Wasabi isn't sure if she's intently focused or just deciding what to say next. At last, she turns back to them. "So. Can I guess why you're here?"

Wasabi shares an uncomfortable glance with Honey Lemon, but none of them reply.

"Alistair sent you, I imagine."

Again, no one answers right away; none of them are sure how much is wise to say. For a moment, irritated wrinkles crease Fujita's forehead. "Who's your leader, then?" she asks impatiently.

No answer. After a beat, Wasabi realizes that all eyes are on him. His brows rise in bewilderment, and he meets the almost guilty gazes of Hiro and Gogo before answering. "We don't really have one."

"Mm. Seems like you do," Fujita replies. Before Wasabi can decide whether he feels flattered or overwhelmed, she aims her next statement at him. "Don't let your team do anything Krei tells you, and don't believe a word that comes out of his mouth. He's dangerous. Unstable. And he'll only get you hurt. The majority of what he says is a lie, and I can usually prove it."

Her calm words are a lot to process all at once, especially because Wasabi is still waiting for the crazed babble he expected to come from a hardcore conspiracy nut, a repeat of what they'd gone through with Callaghan. Instead, he has a neatly dressed woman in a clean button-down telling him she has evidence to back up her claims. He's inclined to trust her, he realizes, but not because of her appearance.

"So. You know what happened to Abigail Callaghan," he replies slowly. Fujita nods. "She's a friend of ours. Guess you probably know that, too," he adds, wondering how closely she's kept tabs on them. "Anyway, what I'm saying is that we already have evidence that Krei's more than willing to take things too far. For me, Abigail's all the proof we need of that." He expects a protest from someone given that they made the trip out here on Krei's word, but the others are quiet. "So if you've got something to say about Krei, or...or whatever it is you were trying to stop him from doing in his labs, we'll listen."

Fujita nods once and beckons them to follow her. She leads them toward the open window and through a door at the corner of the room. They file inside to find a small sort of library, one that might have been in use even when the station was still open, if the books on boxcar transport are any indication. There's a wooden table that takes up most of the floor space, and Gogo drops into a seat without being asked. The others follow suit more cautiously, Baymax squeezing past them to stand in the narrow space between Hiro's chair and the nearest bookshelf.

"Not that this isn't the sort of conversation that shouldn't be overheard," Fujita says with a hollow laugh as she takes a seat. "Everyone here knows about it; it's the only thing we're working on at the moment. But it still feels like it's not the kind of thing you say aloud. Or in polite society. Or at all."

Out of the corner of his eye, Wasabi catches Gogo's attempt to hold back a grimace. He can't say he doesn't feel the same. There's something about Fujita that makes it hard to tell if she's being genuine.

Fujita folds her hands in front of her. "I know you must be suspicious still," she says, as if she's read his thoughts. "You came here to investigate us, after all. But I want to assure you we aren't the enemy. I know what I'm going to say will sound ludicrous, but it's the truth. I just hope you'll give me a chance to explain in full."

"What is it?" Gogo asks impatiently.

Fujita frowns. "I assume Krei must have shown you his latest experiments."

"The robots?" Hiro asks, exchanging a glance with Gogo. "He showed us these...they were, like, the most human-looking robots I've ever seen. They mimicked vocal patterns and facial expressions better than anything I've ever seen on the market, or even in heard of in R&D. I can't even imagine the kind of work he must have put in to program them, or what the code would have even looked like."

"There's a little more to them than that," Fujita explains, her expression satisfied. "There's no programming at work in them, not like you'd expect to find in a traditional robot." Her eyes flick to Baymax and back. "Or I suppose there must be, but not to the degree you think."

"What's that mean?" Fred asks, cheek propped up on one fist. "A traditional robot?"

There's something slick and satisfied in Fujita's smile. "They're not like any robots you'll have encountered before. Krei is experimenting with mind uploading."

There's a beat of silence.

"Mind uploading?" Gogo says doubtfully. "Like, literally uploading someone's mind to a computer? But isn't that still...speculative science? It isn't real, is it?"

"Not to mention that kind of testing's got to be unethical. Maybe illegal?" Honey Lemon adds.

"Yes and no. Some forms of cognitive-computerized testing are acceptable given the current ethical standards, and I'm sure Krei is pretending he passes those standards. But I assure you that nothing going on behind the doors of his laboratories is ethical in the least."

"I don't understand," Hiro says, frowning. "Mental uploading isn't...no one has been able to move past the mental mapping stage, and that's had issues. Even with serial sectioning...no matter what AI they're using, it's been impossible for the technology to run a successful simulation model of a biological human brain's information processing. So no one's at the point where it would be indistinguishable from the original brain's processing. Not even close."

Wasabi blinks in surprise. Not that Hiro can't get really technical when discussing the coding required for Baymax and his healthcare services, but Wasabi hadn't known this was one of his points of expertise.

Fujita, too, looks at Hiro in astonished pleasure. "That's correct. Although from what I understand, Krei has managed to perfect the layer analysis of his serial sectioning method, further than what the latest studies would have you believe possible."

"But it's not possible." Hiro presses.

"No," Fujita agrees. "It's not successful in the way we would traditionally think. Scan a subject's brain tissue, copy it into a device, and in doing so transfer their consciousness. Digital immortality, preservation of memory and information...none of that is possible at the moment. Even for Krei."

"Okay," Hiro replies, exhaling as if he'd been holding his breath. "So what is he doing, then?"

"Oh, he's been telling people that's what he's after, though—immortality and that sort of thing. Maybe he really is after it in the long run. Easier to get funding that way. Not to mention the volunteers." She leans back in her chair, plucking a folder from the shelf behind her and bringing it to the table. "People near death, so far, mostly terminally ill. Donating their bodies to science. Maybe a little hopeful Krei will find his breakthrough with them, that they will be the one saved."

"Have any of them…?" Honey Lemon asks hesitantly.

"None," Fujita replies shortly. "And the procedure is intrusive. Painful. Krei promised his stakeholders at a meeting last month that they would work to 'ensure the viability of the procedure,' basically work on making it less harmful, before moving forward. But I've heard all of his excuses before. I made them on his behalf for almost eight years."

Her face grows stony, and Wasabi wonders if she's considering the time investment, all of it gone down the drain. "Money talks to Krei. Not to mention fame. He'll do anything to be touted as the successful tech genius and billionaire investor, even if it means breaking a few laws. I think if he'd made a move to temporarily stop the experimentation schedule, even to slow it, I might have believed that he was honestly trying to plan for an alternative…" she trails off, closes her eyes for a moment, reconsiders. "No. No, I wouldn't have. I don't believe him. He always follows through with something if he thinks there's an advantage in it. It's one of the things that drew me to the job at Krei Tech in the first place, but now…"

"I still don't understand," Hiro says apologetically. "The people he's working with for the mind uploading, the operation isn't successful for them, but he's still harnessing that data for his robots, because…"

"Because he wants a better AI," Fujita replies, eyes still closed. "The mental uploading doesn't work as planned—the personality is not retained, memories are fragile and vulnerable to data decay, among other things. Our understanding is that nearly all memories are lost in his experiments. But the mental structure, the very humanoid method of information processing, that doesn't go away. The contents of the mind don't keep as planned, but that doesn't change the fact that you're left with a mind capable of complex thought processes beyond anything we've been able to muster with artificial intelligence. Not human, not quite so advanced, but still a large leap."

"So...so…" Wasabi is struggling with the concept, not because it's difficult to understand but because it has become suddenly repulsive to him. He feels nausea roll from his stomach to his chest. "He's basically mind-wiping a bunch of terminally ill volunteers in order to create the mental structure for robots he can sell."

Fujita opens her eyes. Stares. "Not so surprising when you really think about Krei, though. Is it?"

It isn't. Not really. But it doesn't make Wasabi's skin crawl any less.

It's Fred who finally breaks the lingering silence. "So what are we gonna do about it?"

"You have to stop him." Fujita replies. "You have to help us."

"Looks like you were fine on your own the other day," Wasabi retorts pointedly. "Until the fire caught for real and my team had to come bail people out."

Nothing in Fujita's expression changes. "We made a mistake," she says at last. "Our initial reports suggested that the staff would have emptied the parts of the building we set fire to. For that, I'll apologize. It isn't our intention to take human lives. We only want to do enough damage to stop him, or at least to slow things down. We want to send a message.

"And aside from that, our mission yesterday…well, there aren't enough of us willing to try something like that. And those of us who are willing are…" she pauses, shrugs, and makes a vague gesture to herself, to her cropped hair and wire-rimmed glasses, her pale button-down shirt. She looks nice. Maybe her outfit isn't as professional as it might have been during her stint as Krei's executive assistant, but she looks nice all the same. "We're not equipped for it. And those things are...real. They have real defenses, combat programming that we can't overcome on our own. Three of my four guys are laid up in bed today—broken ribs, broken arms, broken legs. It's not pretty."

She leans forward, her expression earnest. "That's why we need your help. We know what's going on, we want to stop it, but we're just some techs with an idea. We're not...you."

"So…" Honey Lemon begins, hands clasped under her chin. "So, you want us to…?"

"We need you to sabotage the project. The robots, the lab—delete everything."

Wasabi shakes his head. "Whoa now. That's not really who we are."

"It's your only choice."

"What about the police?" Honey Lemon asks reasonably. "I mean, no offense, but this doesn't seem like something super urgent. Why not just have them do an investigation, or...?"

She trails off as Fujita shakes her head. "Getting the feds involved will slow him down, but not stop him. And it won't even be an issue for long. Krei's team of lawyers is very...resourceful, and that's the most polite way I can think to put it. In all the time I've worked with him, he's never been pinned for anything. Well, except for what happened to Abigail Callaghan, but any jury would have had to been blind and deaf not to side with her after all the evidence came out about what he did. No, if we make a move like that...there's just no point. Not if we want to stop him."

The room falls silent once more. It's a huge task, and not one Wasabi's sure they should tackle.

"So what do we do?" Gogo prompts, glancing around the room to make it clear that she's talking only to the team this time. In spite of whatever had happened earlier when they'd all looked to Wasabi for leadership, they'd reached a comfortable level of synergy with regular, democratic polls, which doesn't look to be changing anytime soon.

"I'm in," Hiro says at once, biting his lip as everyone turns to face him. "I think...for Abigail. I'm in."

Fred heaves a long sigh at this, leaning over to press his forehead to the table. "Yeah," he says at last. "If we can keep stuff like that from happening to someone else, I think we have to."

A sense of dread fills Wasabi. He turns to meet Honey Lemon's gaze, eyebrows raised, and she frowns back at him apologetically. "I agree," she says. "This isn't our norm, but I think this time around, it might be for the best."

They all turn to Wasabi, who grimaces up at the ceiling. It's not that he doesn't agree at this point, or that it wouldn't be the right thing to do. And either way, it isn't like he can do anything against the current vote. But he feels somehow bitter about the way things turned out. Thus far, sabotage and destruction are unintended side effects of what they do, not their primary purpose. This isn't what he signed up for, and he can't help but think they might not have ended up in this situation were it not for Hiro and Gogo.

"Yeah," he says finally. "We do what we gotta do."

"Alright then," Fujita says after a beat. "Let's figure out how this is going to work."

.

By the time Wasabi and the team trudge from the building, fatigue heavy in his shoulders, the fires and conversations have died down. Except for a few stragglers, the campground is dark and still, bathed in the same yellow glow of the expressway streetlights overhead.

It's been a lot to take in, and the single-file trek across the train tracks and through the grass is mostly silent, each of them lost in their own thoughts or in a fog of exhaustion. Wasabi hears Hiro murmuring to Baymax behind him, but it feels like too much energy to listen in. As they leave the grassy lot and step back into the alley, Gogo soundlessly sidles up to him.

It must be early morning, because the sky to the east has a purple tint to it instead of the deep black to the west. The bars are nearly empty as they pass. A municipal droid rolls across the sidewalk on the other side of the street, sweeping trash and debris into its bin.

Wasabi is tiredly trying to recall the name of the cross street they'd parked the car on when Gogo finally speaks. "So," she says, voice lowered so only he can hear. "I guess the moral of today is that me and Hiro are both reckless idiots who probably need someone besides a marshmallow pushover to talk us out of dangerous stuff."

With a snort, Wasabi shoots a glance over his shoulder at Baymax, who seems to be falling victim to Hiro's argument about carrying him piggyback the rest of the way. "You think?"

Irritation flashes across Gogo's face, but it softens. "Look, let's be real for a second. The bot fighting and street racing stuff? Probably not going to stop. It's what we like to do, we're safe about it, it's not super illegal—"

"Not super—what does that even—!"

"—but what we did with Krei, going on the patrol without you guys...that wasn't okay."

It takes him a few beats to recover from his surprise. "No, it wasn't," he agrees. "I mean, that's why we're a team, right? To head into stuff like that together. You guys could've gotten hurt, and even Abigail wouldn't have known. None of us would have had any idea."

"Yeah," Gogo sighs. "I get it."

Ahead of them, Fred and Honey Lemon have jogged forward to peer down the next cross street for Wasabi's car. Honey Lemon turns to say something to him, a grin on her face, and Fred's replying laughter is way too loud for this hour of the morning.

"Okay." Wasabi says. "So next time…"

"God, I hope there's not a next time," Gogo laughs. "But if there is, we'll...I dunno. Radio you, I guess."

"You'd better," Wasabi retorts. "And no trying to cover it up like you did this morning. No more secrets."

At this, she turns to look at him, her expression closed off once more. "Yeah," she says finally, looking down at her feet. "No more secrets."

.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Confession. Everything here is pseudoscience. Everything. In case you were wondering.
> 
> Wasabi thinks too much. This chapter got way outta control, and I'm so tired I'm almost delirious so hopefully it was semi-coherent :) Thanks for reading!


	4. Fred

 

 

Mario's Pizza and Arcade is lamentably short on the "arcade" bit, at least in Fred's mind. A couple of old-school gaming stations are wedged into a tiny room in the back: an old hologram dance machine, a set of virtual hovercar racing sims, and some ridiculously retro pinball machines which are basically the only reason the arcade is worth a visit. If it weren't for how close the place is to SFIT's campus—close enough to cultivate a college-y hipster vibe that appeals to university students—it might not have survived the two decades it now counts under its belt.

But there's one other thing the place has going for it, and that's the  _pizza._ Fred's pretty sure it's the combo of the classic wood-fired ovens and the fact that they drop some serious cheese bombs onto their homemade dough. The resulting gooey masterpiece is enough to feature in any kid's midnight-snack-dreams, especially a kid with as little parental intervention in his dietary decisions as Fred. He's been coming here at least once a week since he was ten years old and Heathcliff started trusting him enough to make the trip here on his own (though not without being discreetly tailed by the family limo driver the first few times). He knows the guys who work here, has watched them come and go, and they're cool enough to let him hog a whole table in the back while he works on his thesis or, more recently, tweaks his applications for every Master's in English program on the west coast.

So it probably surprises exactly no one when Fred gathered them all from their separate abodes to herd them there earlier this morning. He doesn't mention that they probably just need a place to talk things over and cool down, to think through the events of the past day or so.

Tony Stark, genius that he is, did it with shawarma. Fred's more of a pizza guy himself.

None of his efforts keep Gogo and Wasabi from arguing about every little detail of everything ever, but there's not much he can do about that. In private, Fred thinks of himself as the group's neutral party, the buffer. It's an important job, not one he takes lightly—sort of a slightly less badass but still nonetheless pacifistic version of Storm from the X-Men (if you want to believe that). There's always the one neutral party who cools everyone down. Once upon a time, of course, there were two—Tadashi used to help. Sure, he'd occasionally get into small spats with Wasabi, whom he'd known the longest, but they were more like sibling rivalries than anything else.

Still, Fred's not sure even Tadashi could have helped rein in the stony glares Wasabi and Gogo keep passing back and forth.

It's been happening the whole time, starting from when they argued over pizza toppings like old men arguing politics and continuing 'till now, when they argue over the Master Plan (TM). Again.

"C'mon, we're all on the same page," Fred tells them. His timing isn't the best, because he's just taken a bite of the steaming hot pie, and the cheese boils across his tongue. At his side, Hiro snickers as he fans his face. Fred kicks his foot under the table. Wasabi and Gogo are pointedly not looking at each other. "And also on the same team, which you might have forgotten."

"I'm just saying that you two are  _not_ going together when we split up tonight," Wasabi says, gesturing to Hiro and Gogo. Hiro doesn't seem to mind, hasn't objected the three other times Wasabi's brought this up, but the words kick Gogo back into gear.

"Why the hell not? We work well together—"

"I'd just rather you were separate. Between the two of you, bad ideas amplify like constructive interference."

Gogo grits her teeth. "You're not  _actually_ our leader, you know."

"Gogo," Honey Lemon starts, glancing at Wasabi, but Gogo waves her arm in a dismissive gesture.

"He's probably right," Hiro begins before she can continue.

Gogo groans. "Not you too—"

"Hiro's a sneak," Fred says. It's enough of a non sequitur that it shuts them all up, and they turn to stare. "He's the quietest out of all of us. Scares the heck out of me all the time, just popping up behind me out of the blue when I'm working. If we need someone to grab the docs and go, he's our guy."

"Not like scaring you's that hard to do," Hiro retorts, but he looks pleased. Since he's trying to be diplomatic, Fred doesn't mention the other reason he wants Hiro to do the grab-and-go part: the person ransacking the documents will be out of harm's way, or at least as far from it as they can manage.

Gogo stares at Fred for a beat, then shrugs. "Yeah, guess that makes sense. But he'll need backup—"

"Do you  _need_ to go with Hiro for some reason, or are you just trying to fight with me?" Wasabi asks, exasperated. The stubborn look on Gogo's face says it all.

Fred jumps in. "Baymax'll be with him for obvious reasons. They can take care of themselves," he adds casually, slinging an arm across Hiro's shoulders.

Gogo grumbles something under her breath, but Fred can't make it out.

" _Any_ way," Honey Lemon says, turning to Hiro. "If we're going to get all this out in the open, we're going to need some serious evidence. Medical paperwork, lab reports—anything to do with the mind transfer process, and  _especially_ anything you can find where the average person would freak out once we go public with it."

"And the rest of us can look for anything while we're 'saving the day' from Technotage," Fred adds, taking a slice of pizza. The cheese trails as he pulls it away from the tray, and Gogo swipes one ribbon of it before he can get it onto his plate.

"Sure," she retorts sarcastically, twisting her mouth around the hot cheese. "With all the extra time we'll have in between dodging their explosions of doom."

"Hey,  _some_ of us can multitask." Fred grins at her cheekily, mostly to distract from the strangled sound Wasabi makes as he slouches against the back of his seat.

"Please no one say the word  _explosions_ in front of Wasabi," Gogo says in a stage whisper. "It hurts his little heart."

Wasabi looks away before Gogo can see the irritation in his expression, before she knows she's won. Hiro and Honey Lemon take a sudden interest in their food, Hiro scarfing his down as Honey Lemon delicately picks the peppers off of her slice.

 _This is gonna be a fun time,_ Fred thinks to himself, just as Gogo starts on the subject of whose turn it is to pay the bill this time to pull Wasabi into another argument.  _The worst fireworks aren't going to be the literal ones._

.

"Sooooo...We're gonna die in the literal fires of hell," Gogo complains.

A ghoulish red light has engulfed one of the outbuildings of Krei lab, a flicker of orange glowing from within. The light makes the structure's windows look eerily like eyes, at least when Fred's vision isn't partially obscured by a thick veil of ashes. Up above, the evening sky is so dark that it's hard to tell where the smoke ends and the clouds begin.

"No one's dying, don't be dramatic," Wasabi grumbles. They sit crouching on the landscaped grass that slopes toward the string of pavement and cement structures, half-hidden behind a trio of perfectly cubic bushes. The ashes swirl and settle around them, and Wasabi shifts uneasily in place. "We're not even getting that close."

"And it's not  _literal_ ," Fred grunts under his breath.

"At least it's slightly more controlled than the last time I was in this hellhole," Gogo mutters, wiping sweat from her neck.

"Yeah, let's not repeat that one," Wasabi says, clearing his throat as a breath of hot, dry air sweeps ashes into their faces. "Alright. Time to go in?"

Fred blinks furiously. Cinders cling to his eyelashes, but he's not about to swipe them away with the claws of his outfit. "Sure, leave it to me. We can have some flamethrower on flame action."

" _Or_ I can go in first and clear the way," Honey Lemon says, gently nudging Fred aside. In one hand is a light blue globe; the other clutches her purse.

"Or that."

Gogo jerks her head in the direction of the lab proper. "Looks like Krei's people coming to check it out. I'll roll around the place and do a sweep to make sure we're clear, but you guys should hold 'em off."

By some small miracle, Wasabi has no argument. Honey Lemon is off before he could have made one anyway, lean limbs springing forward. After a beat, Gogo slips after her, clambering down the grass and rolling onto the pavement below. She sweeps effortlessly toward the flames like a dart, the orange glow casting long shadows at her back. For a moment, she and Gogo are the only things moving, insects dancing near candlelight, until Honey Lemon's ice bombs destroy the illusion, crackling across the worst of the fire as the flames sputter and hiss.

Figures move out of the corner of Fred's eye, just as Gogo had mentioned. "Lab peeps at ten o'clock," Fred warns. Wasabi has already started forward, and Fred trails behind. "This is a good time for the theme song, yeah?"

"It's real life, Fred. There's  _never_ a good time for a theme song," Wasabi retorts without looking back. He sounds amused anyway.

"Everyone loves theme songs! Gotta give the people what they want.  _Hey, people,_ " he calls out as they approach the lab workers, a trio smothered in ash and soot. "Hey, we're helping with—" He stops short. They aren't people. It had taken a moment, considering their pale and humanoid faces, streaked with ash and soot and still somehow flawless, to realize that their bodies are bare. Naked, or they would be if they were human. Instead, a clear torso reveals wires and circuitry where organs should have been.

Where organs  _had_ been. These robots were once people, only now they'd...well, died, in a way. Their consciousness and memories destroyed to implant efficient processors into these  _things_.

"You guys are even more terrifying than what I got from the descriptions," Fred blurts. Wasabi must be taken aback as well, because he doesn't even roll his eyes at the rudeness.

"You're trespassing," one of them says pointedly.

Fred cringes, not because of the words but because he half-expected—or maybe half-hoped—they were only statues. Weren't the robots forbidden from coming outside, according to Hiro and Gogo?

"Not trespassing," Wasabi croaks. He clears his throat. "Or—yes, we are, but in a case where trespassing may save a life or property—"

"You're Big Hero 6," another says, facing away from them. It looks to the fire, dark eyes glittering in the lingering red glow. Fred follows its gaze. The fire is mostly gone, with nearby swaths of ice glinting in the last glowing patches. Honey Lemon prances around one corner, swiveling on her toes to swing another ball through an open window. Gogo hangs back, arms folded as she looks on. Even from afar, her expression looks grimly satisfied.

"That's us," Fred says lamely, pulling his hands up for floppy jazz hands. Or claws.

"Heard you were going to be keeping an eye out, according to Alistair Krei," the first says. "Awful fast for a patrol, though. You must have been real close by." Somehow, its plastic expression turns shrewd.

In fact, they'd been on the premises when Fujita's people had set the explosives and fled. Not that the robot could have known. Not that  _anyone_ could have known. None of them had counted on anyone being around fast enough to notice how quickly their team was responding to the explosives.

Maybe it's the darkness from the dimming flames, or maybe it's the humanoid faces—weirdly hard to read, in a way—but Fred thinks they seem more wary than he'd have expected from robots. Baymax is the only robot Fred's ever really gotten to know, and unless Baymax knows for a fact that your statement is incorrect, he can't usually tell if you're lying. Maybe these robots, with whatever Krei has done to them, can detect lies more efficiently, catch the awkward pauses and microexpressions that give it away.

"You  _knowwww,_ " Fred begins thoughtfully, drawing out the sound, because maybe the best way to mask their lies is by making all of the conversation sound awkward. Awkward is something Fred is good at. "You know, there's seriously no telling what other stuff could be going on around here. I mean look at this—random fire...thing. So maybe it would be cool, since we're out here on patrol anyway, to do a perimeter check. All of us. Together. More eyes, right?"

Wasabi is looking at Fred as if he's grown another head, which isn't that far off from how most people normally look at him. Fred tries to communicate through a mild, open expression that everything is fine. It doesn't seem to work.

"That's our job at the moment," one of the robots volunteers. "We're on an external patrol."

"There aren't six of you," another observes, maybe the one who'd noted that they were Big Hero 6.

"Ah, no," Wasabi says. He frowns, eyes flitting back to Gogo and Honey Lemon, who have wrapped the outbuilding in a shimmering layer of frost, which steams faintly in the night. The girls are walking this way. "We're—the others are—"

"On patrol!" Fred interjects. "Either checking the perimeter, or maybe they headed into the woods a little, or even just down the road." Everyone stares at Fred, the robots with mild annoyance, Wasabi in resignation, and Honey Lemon and Gogo, approaching the conversation slowly, with bemusement. "Really. All of you should go check them out. Bet they wouldn't be gone this long unless they found something."

"Who?" Honey Lemon asks, frowning at the strange robots.

"The other two members of Big Hero 6," Fred replies pointedly, wiggling his eyebrows a little. Fortunately, Honey Lemon is obviously much better with Fred's brand of silent communication, because she gets the idea at once, nodding grimly. "They're probably around," Fred continues. "Definitely out here somewhere. So off with you now." He steps back, giving a sharp wave of one claw.

"Where are you going?" one of the robots interjects.

"Check the car. I mean, you really never know—just in case. There's no telling what's going on around here."

"Your car?" another robot asks skeptically.

"How'd you think we got here?" Fred asks, laughing as he turns his back on them all.

 _The funny thing is that we_ did  _come by car_ , Fred thinks as he ignores the murmur of confused conversation behind him, trudging in the direction from which they'd come. Wasabi had insisted that they travel here together, and it wasn't like they exactly had options for transportation that didn't involve a public bus, like those were going to come this far out. And traveling via the family limo in superhero outfits was so lame it was completely out of the question.

Just for show, Fred takes a few minutes to tromp across the lawn and toward the treeline, getting partway to where Wasabi's car is parked in the front parking lot (why bother being secret if they were supposed to be patrolling, after all). When he turns to find that the others have gone, probably having rounded the corner of the building for their perimeter check, he doubles back toward the labs.

The doors are locked, of course, especially at this hour. But this is the way Hiro had come earlier, breaking in using the code Fujita had passed along. Fred doesn't have the brains of Hiro when it comes to actually  _hacking_ electronics, but his mind's a steel trap (sometimes), and he can remember the passcode Hiro mentioned to unlock the door well enough.

 _This whole thing would be easier if we could just radio each other like normal_ , Fred thinks as he steps across the threshold and into the building. It feels weirdly spooky being so detached from the others, unable to either call for help or hear their positions. (Or, more likely, make stupid jokes over their private channel.) It doesn't help that the rooms he passes are wide and sterile, lights dimmed as they might be during the sleeping leg of an overseas flight, open and abandoned when there are desks and chairs and tables to be filled.

Fred has a general idea of where Hiro might be, only because they'd all studied the blueprint to understand the most likely places where the team might find the kinds of documentation they needed. He sets off through the maze of silent laboratories, turning about at dead ends and wondering if he's doomed to wander this place forever like the mythical wandering Jew. He doubles back in an empty hall, rounding a corner, when he thinks he hears something. A shout.

As he gets closer, the corridor opens up into a larger lab space with clusters of tables and shelves scattered throughout, machines and monitors linked by glittering circuitry and cords. He can hear movement on the other end beyond the shelving, banging and muttering. He hurries over (more slowly than he would have liked given his bulky costume) and pushes a wheeled whiteboard out of his path.

Hiro jumps as Fred appears, and then relief crosses his face. "Thought you were another one," he mutters, grabbing Fred's upper arm and pulling him around to face the way he'd come. "Come on!"

Fred opens his mouth to protest as Hiro starts dragging him off, but he's interrupted by a booming thud that seems to resonate in the empty space. Through the nearby lab door, a robot peers through the window, irate.

"That door won't hold," Hiro calls to Baymax, stopping to peer around the shelves. The robot is pushing a heavy metal table to join a set of chairs that currently blocks the threshold. "Or else they'll just find another way."

Baymax obediently waddle-runs behind them, and Hiro pushes Fred forward. Fred's mind rattles to take all of this in. "Did you get the stuff?"

"Couldn't," Hiro replies shortly. "They found us too fast—and I guess they realized we weren't supposed to be there, 'cause they started attacking."

"Attacking?"

"Yeah, color me surprised too." Hiro has darted toward the open doorway faster than Fred can keep up, one of the benefits of wearing light armor.

"C'mon, Baymax, buddy," Fred grumbles as his spiked tail catches on something. "Hey, Hiro," he yanking it free. "Can we actually get out this way?"

"It's the way we came in, isn't it?" Hiro's voice echoes from the corridor.

"Yeah, but I mean do you know the way out."

"Uhhhh…" When Fred rounds the corner, Hiro is standing at a T junction, peering one way and then the other. "No. But we need to move before they get through that door."

"Righto," Fred replies. "This way."

The direction he picks is random, but Hiro follows alongside him anyway, and the squeak of Baymax's latex isn't far behind. The corridor isn't totally dark, but with only the emergency lights on, it's eerie. As they race onward, Fred finds himself imagining the plot points of every horror movie ever—flashlights skipping across shadowed walls as the heroes run, potential jump-scares at every fork in the hall. For about twenty seconds, they're on their way to an actual racing-through-labyrinths sort of action scene, and then a door opens right in front of Fred's face too fast for him to stop.

"Son of a Scarlet Witch," he cries, cradling his nose in his claws and lying on the cold floor. "What—"

Above him looms a ghost face, menacing and pale in the light from the doorway. Two more robots join the first as Hiro grabs Fred by the shoulder to pull him to his feet.

"Heyyy, we were just—"

"You're coming with us."

One of the robots reaches out to grab Hiro's forearm, but Hiro darts back. He and Fred turn to run, making it a few paces forward until something pulls at the back of Fred's armor and he lurches forward in the suit. Ahead of him, Hiro cries out, stopping short to get back to Fred. A robot appears to one side of Fred, and before he can fully face it, Baymax uses one rubbery arm to block a punch that would have landed on Fred's stomach.

"Get off of him," Hiro shouts, lunging back before Fred can say something properly heroic like  _go on, leave me behind._

Something hits the back of his head and Fred is lost in the scramble for a few moments. Distantly, Hiro cries out in pain, and Fred swipes one of his massive claws at the robot who'd done it; using his flamethrower in the close quarters of the darkened corridor, though awesome, is way too risky. The robots match them blow for blow, Fred and Baymax covering Hiro as much as possible. (No, who's he kidding? If it weren't for Baymax's armored strikes, they'd be a lot worse off.) But the enemy has backup: adding to their original numbers, robot after robot piles into the hallway, packing in as tightly as a rush hour subway crowd. And the space isn't narrow enough to keep them from being surrounded—one minute, Fred turns his head to see the path to their escape, and in the next minute, after wrestling a robot from his back and finding Hiro kicking one onto the floor, their window of opportunity is barricaded by more of the eerily calm robots.

With his huge bulk, Baymax sweeps a pair of them aside, but there are too many. Fred's arms are pinned behind his back, the hood of his costume sliding off his head and a sour tang of blood in his mouth. Hiro is somewhere beside him, pressed against the wall hard enough to make him groan.

"We have the other two," one of the robots says to Baymax, backing away from an armored fist. "Come quietly and we won't hurt them."

But then Fred sees the light. Literally. Over the sea of robot heads and farther down the darkened hall is a bluish glow, an orb that seems to levitate in the air until it comes close enough for Fred to make out Honey Lemon, one of her chemical balls held high in the air. Gogo and Wasabi are behind her, armor glinting as they rush in, and then it's a flat-out war.

Fred does a lot of damage, he thinks—it's hard to tell in the blur of punches and kicks—but his blood is rushing in his ears and everything feels so real, so definite. It's the adrenaline, he realizes, taking another punch to the gut. He can barely feel anything at all, just focusing on target after target after target, until it creeps up on him. Washes of pain, bruises under unyielding steel fists, one arm yanked behind him.

He catches glimpses of the others, just brief flashes. Nearby, Honey Lemon is dragged by her rope of blonde hair, arm swinging around to fuse one of her globes to a robot's ankle. A minute later, there's the glow of Wasabi's plasma blades against his cracked eyeshield, three or four robots clambering onto his back to press him to the ground. Gogo skates past almost too quickly to see, but she spits blood onto the lab floor beside him as she passes. Baymax is pulling one of the robots off of Hiro, one massive fist swinging down onto its head. It's all too much, and in between dodging Fred has a moment to think they're in way over their heads, more than they've ever been before.

Then, it stops all at once. Quiets all at once.

Fred looks around, ears ringing and nearly dizzy with the sudden stop. Someone must have shouted a command. Gogo and Wasabi and the others continue to struggle, almost comically, against the hold of the robots, all of whom have suddenly stilled. Their positions are odd—paused in mid-stride, or metallic arms pulled back for another blow, all of their heads turned in the direction of the door at the far end of the hallway. It's almost like the ending of some impromptu game of freeze tag—with Krei as the last one standing. The CEO strides down the hallway toward them, his face contorted out of its normal benign humor and into something darker.

"Do you have  _any idea_  what you might have done?" he asks coldly, and his voice is easily audible in the quiet, even bookended by a few dozen robots. It's hard to tell who he's addressing. "Do you have any idea how much  _work_ we've put into this project, and all of you are fighting each other like—" He cuts himself off, taking a long breath. It seems to calm him, because he slowly draws himself to full height, eyes wandering around the room. "You were asked to patrol, but trespassing without reason isn't a patrol."

"We had reason," Gogo retorts, frowning. There's blood at the corner of her mouth. One of the robots holds her left arm in a vice grip above her head, but she's stopped struggling, only pressing her free hand defiantly against its chest. "There were explosions, and a fire—"

"All outside. No reason for you to come in," one of the robots retorts. It holds Hiro in a headlock and shakes him a little. "But we found this one at one of the computers."

Krei turns to Hiro, eyebrows raised. "Looking for anything in particular?"

Hiro's a terrible liar. His eyes, one already pillowed in a blue bruise, grow wide. "Uh…"

"Right," Krei says after a moment. "What do you know?"

"Everything," Gogo spits, "and we have proof of it—it's all with Technotage, they're going to be—"

"We don't have anything," Wasabi is saying frantically. "Actually—"

"You have nothing," Krei says coldly. "And no one will believe you."

Honey Lemon begins to protest as Fred's head swims. The robot gripping his arm is bearing most of his weight now.

"Take them to lab 5C and seal the doors," Krei says, ignoring the rest of them. "I'll figure out what to do with them later."

"That makes no sense."

Fred shakes himself out of it at this, only because the preposterous statement comes from the one of the robots. It—her? the voice sounds vaguely feminine—stares pointedly at Krei. "Keeping them alive at this point is more trouble than it's worth. If you take care of them now, the rest of the work is over. There's no need for guarding them, buying their silence after their release, or monitoring them afterwards."

She says this so coolly, like it's just a business decision and not six lives at stake. Krei is staring at her like an insect underfoot. "We will place them in 5C. No one dies until that decision has been made. For the time being, we operate as though the legal department will nail them with something that will make them look crazy enough not to be believed. If and when that isn't the case, it's  _my_ say."

The robot nods her head slowly, looking unconvinced. All of the others still have their eyes fixed upon Krei with the same cool, considering gaze.

 _Maybe that's the real difference,_ he thinks as the robots move to obey, pressing in on all sides. They strategically pin Wasabi's and Honey Lemon's arms so they have no access to their fighting strengths. Gogo is practically being carried, and with Hiro in an awkward headlock, Baymax moves along as quietly as expected, minus the occasional directive about keeping his charge's airflow clear.  _The difference between Baymax and a robot with human flexibility is that these guys might have enough_ human  _in them to reconsider the rules if it suits them—which is obviously a terrible idea._ One of the robots elbows him in the gut when he stumbles, but he picks himself up.  _Krei meant to create an army of robots to order around, but instead he accidentally made an army with its own opinions about how to handle stuff. Which is maybe fine._

_As long as they don't think it's more logical to kill us off._

_._

It figures that the first time all night that Fred's had enough space to use his flamethrower is when there's no danger at all and they literally just need the heat.

"Kind of a shame about the computers, though," Wasabi says lamely. He moves a little closer to the flames, where a couple of state-of-the-art consoles lay smouldering in a blackened pile.

Fred guesses that short of some kind of jail or holding cell, Lab 5C was chosen as their prison because it must be the room with the least expensive equipment on the premises. Krei had rightly feared damage to his equipment, and he'd only given them access to two neat rows of desktop computers that are probably used for lighter work over serious experimentation. The real downside is that computer labs have to stay cool, and this one is  _freezing,_ either by design or because the stupid robots are using this as some kind of petty revenge.

None of their usual tricks seem to be effective in the room: Fred's flamethrower has no effect on the steel doors, nor do Wasabi's plasma blades. Honey Lemon's chem-balls might have helped if she hadn't used her new acid ones up earlier, and the foaming, ice, and smokescreen options don't seem particularly useful now.

"Who gives a crap about the freaking computers? Krei can  _eat_ me," Gogo says with a scowl. Her chattering teeth take some of the bite out of the statement.

"Burning plastics often release highly toxic chemicals called dioxins," Baymax notes. After proclaiming that there's not much he can do for the rest of them without additional tools, he is bent over Honey Lemon to apply some sort of mist to a swath of shallow cuts on the side of her neck. "They are persistent carcinogens, and their consumption should be limited."

"We know, big guy," Hiro says tiredly. "It's just until we figure out what to do next."

"We can't stay here too long. It's freezing," Honey Lemon says. She presses her arms, covered only in thin spandex, tightly against her stomach.

The rest of them face the fire, but Wasabi is still peering around the room as though an exit might abruptly spring into existence. The light glints against his visor as he scans the far wall. "No one's got a signal from Abigail or Fujita?"

"Nothing since we were outside."

"Maybe they'll explode their way in?"

"Fat chance they'll actually help us at this point," Wasabi says, still staring away. "They just needed a set of suckers willing to give it a shot. Now we get to take the fall for them. Smart move."

"Hey, it's not like that," Hiro retorts, turning to face Wasabi.

"Well, what  _is_ it like? Do you know? Because from what I've seen, you guys have known them for point two seconds, same as the rest of us."

Fred's head throbs. He doesn't really want to deal with this right now, but the last thing they need is to be fighting at this point. "Whoa, now, Wasabi—"

"I don't think it's intentional is all," Hiro says placatingly. "Not like it helps them to abandon us or something."

"Still, they could be a little more aggressive with a rescue here," Gogo grumbles. "Seriously, if it's their fault we end up sleeping in this icebox—"

" _Their fault_ nothing," Wasabi retorts irritably. "You guys were the ones who got us into this." He doesn't clarify who. Hiro looks wounded as Fred cringes, and to Wasabi's credit, he instantly shuts up, a regretful look on his face. It doesn't stop Gogo from looking over at him with a scowl.

"Are you serious?" she asks. "You're really throwing blame at us  _now?_ " Wasabi opens his mouth to interrupt, but Gogo continues. "So we went on patrol without you. We're goddamn  _sorry_. We went over that part, and the punishment was practically hacking out our lungs. And I apologized. So freaking drop it, okay?

"Can we just  _not_?" Honey Lemon asks. She looks as tired as Fred feels.

Wasabi grumbles. Hiro and Gogo exchange a meaningful glance. "You're gonna do that guilt thing, aren't you?" Hiro asks.

"I don't do a  _guilt thing_."

"Look. Guys. Let's focus on what we can actually do right now. Like getting out of here? Remember that?" Fred interjects.

Gogo doesn't even look at him. "Okay, that's really stupid. Because you're such a hypocrite. For real." Her expression is suddenly less resigned, more fierce. Her back is straight, tensed for a fight. Fred and Honey Lemon, sensing the danger, lean in to try and deflect whatever's going to happen, but Gogo's furious gaze rounds on them as well. "Fuck! No. No, you all are.  _You,_ too."

Flabbergasted, Fred opens his mouth to speak but can't get a word in edgewise.

"All of you are  _always_ laying down rules and trying to take the higher ground to preach about teamwork, and it's like Hiro and I are rebellious  _children_ that need to learn the rules of freaking life, like we need to include you in everything we do for approval like we're actually a functioning team, but we're  _not_. This isn't a democracy. The lines of communication go down from Wasabi to you two and then just cut off, and Hiro and I are just supposed to blindly be ok with whatever you decide? Nuh uh. And on top of it, you—" Gogo cuts herself off, frustrated.

Fred feels uneasy.

"The hell are you talking about?" Wasabi asks uncertainly.

Strangely enough, now that Gogo has said this much, her righteous indignation leaves her deflated all at once. Her back hunches as if she's going to curl in on herself, and she glares down at the floor. It's Hiro who finally picks up where she left off. "She's talking about  _you_. Leaving. All of you," he says quietly. "Grad school. And Fred's internship starts in June, just a couple weeks." The room goes silent except the sound of Fred's heart drumming in his ears. "We  _know._ I mean you guys knew for months, and we're just like, waiting for you to clue us in and you never do…and when we started asking pointed questions about what your plans were all of you lied and acted like everything was staying the same. It's just…" at this, he too breaks off with a frustrated grunt.

Fred looks at Wasabi, then at Honey Lemon. Sees his own surprise mirrored back on their faces. Idiotically, for just a few seconds, Fred's half crushed and half irritated.  _Leaving_ has been this private thing for so long—not that he's trying to run away from this, from his friends, but it's been his secret to clutch at, to hide and worry over. All along, he's felt this weird rush of fear from being in this all alone, taking the time to make sure of his decision, feeling how it fits on him like trying on new clothes, before he feels comfortable telling the group.

It's a scary thing, but one of the rewards has always been  _this_ conversation, his chance to pull back the curtain, to talk about his decision—and now, not only is this moment shared, but it's all spilled out in a way he can't control.

But the next thought that hits is  _I'm not alone in this._ Not that they're all in it together, exactly—in fact, they'll be going their separate ways—but it won't be just him pulling away, him reshaping the dynamic of the group, his fault alone. Wasabi and Honey Lemon are now just as much to blame, and somehow that feels less frightening.

"How'd you know?" Wasabi asks stupidly.

Gogo shrugs in an attempt at nonchalance, but her fists are still clenched. "I mean, you guys have been sneaking around since the fall getting all your crap together, you didn't think we'd wonder? You guys are  _such_ hypocrites—"

"Also, I dug into student records," Hiro adds, glancing at Gogo, who nods.

After a moment, Honey Lemon bites her lip. "Fred, you're leaving for an internship?"

"Yeah, I...I didn't know you were going to grad school," Fred tells her defensively, and then he stops himself. "I- Sorry, guys. I'm still figuring out this whole thing, and it just felt weird, so..."

"Where are  _you_  going?" Her voice is calm, but she wrings her hands in her lap.

"I...you guys know I wanna get my MFA one day. But when you apply, it pays to have actual life experience outside of school, you know? Stuff you can write about that matters _._ And...well, I can't exactly write about secret patrols and stuff, so I might as well have no life experience." he adds wryly. "I'm gonna intern with this startup based out of East Fujian. They're creating this app to encourage independent graphic novel writers, and it's...you know. Kind of  _me_."

"I didn't know," Wasabi says gravely. "We didn't know. Why didn't you say something?"

He doesn't say it in a challenging way. His voice is somber. But Fred still bounces the question back to him. "Why didn't  _you_?"

Wasabi looks away. "I didn't want it to be a big thing."

"Well, now it's a big thing," Gogo bites out.

"You didn't tell each other?" Hiro asks. "We thought you guys were just, like, communicating with each other the whole time."

"Wasabi and I talked," Honey Lemon admits. "But I didn't know about Fred." She glances at Wasabi, who shakes his head. Fred feels a little torn, halfway between the betrayal of Hiro and Gogo and the guilt of Honey Lemon and Wasabi.

Hiro stands, ignoring the eyes that fall upon him, and starts walking restlessly back and forth across the aisle in front of them.

"It's not…like it's the end of the world." Wasabi says quietly, watching Hiro pace. "Nothing's going to change."

" _Everything's_ going to change, you asshole," Gogo says lowly. "You're leaving. There's no—no stupid briefings after patrols, or Fred making everyone compare five different pretzel places, or studying for finals in the lab at two a.m. Soon, you guys are literally going to be scattered around the world. And you've been hiding this since—I mean, you don't just pack your shit and decide to go to grad school one day. You have to apply like a decade in advance, so you knew and just kept us in the dark, even after it was a sure thing. And—maybe this sounds stupid or like I'm blowing it out of proportion, but it's just a big freaking decision for you to—" Again, she stops. Turns away. Fred wonders if she's tearing up, but Gogo doesn't do that. "So don't baby us. If that's how it's gonna be, I'd almost rather you cut and run."

"You don't mean that."

"Maybe I do."

Honey Lemon leans forward a little, maybe to try and catch Gogo's eye. "This is why you guys have been so mad? And not talking to us?"

Gogo shrugs. "It started out easy, like we were just going to give you the silent treatment and bitch about you behind your back until you figured it out and told us. I guess it got out of control because...you never did."

Fred can't really wrap his head around how surreal this moment is, and not just because his head is still swimming a bit from the pounding he'd taken. He can't remember the last time any of them fought like this. Maybe not since they'd first formed the group and Hiro went batshit crazy trying to have Baymax kill Callaghan. It feels scary. Something like standing over a ledge and looking down.

The fire's dying down to embers, spitting a few last angry sparks. Honey Lemon heaves a slow sigh, and Fred thinks he can make out her breath in the chill air.

"I think I can fit in there," Hiro says abruptly. Fred turns to look. Hiro is staring up at a grate on the wall, one that's half again as wide as the kid's narrow shoulders. He turns back to the group, scans their faces, and Fred's not sure what he sees—anxiety, apathy, irritation—but his expression tightens. "This whole thing sucks. And we're going to argue about it later. But if we have a way out, we have to use it. Otherwise, there's no telling if we're getting out at all, especially if they find somewhere to keep us that's  _actually_ secure, and if Krei decides to let the robots have their way…"

He doesn't need to finish the thought. Wasabi tiredly pushes himself to his feet. "You're not going out there alone."

"Well,  _you're_ not going with me. No way you'd fit."

"Thanks, man," Wasabi says sarcastically, a hint of a smile on his face. "But I meant one of the others…" He looks back at the vent and then at the team. Hiro's the smallest of them, and even with Gogo's slight frame, she probably won't fit either.

"Baymax'll come too," Hiro says, raising his eyebrow at the robot in question. "We've done it before."

Baymax inclines his head. "I will make my deflation as quiet as possible this time."

"Well, what, do the rest of us just sit here while you guys are taking on robots outside?" Gogo asks, folding her arms.

"Just for a minute. They can't have a heavy guard on us, right? We're not supposed to be able to get out, and they probably think we all have hypothermia or something. So Baymax and I—okay, mostly Baymax—can take care of the guard and let you out."

"It's a better plan than anything else we've come up with," Honey Lemon says, probably before Wasabi or Gogo can argue. "And we do need to move fast."

Somehow, having a plan in place helps them to snap back to themselves, shedding the argument as they move over to the vent. Wasabi slices the hinges off with his plasma blades, then crouches down, fingers wound together, to give Hiro a leg up. Once Hiro has clambered carefully into the vent, Baymax, stripped of his armor and deflated, is pushed up as well. The robot holds onto Hiro's leg to be dragged inside.

The waiting part is hard. The quiet sound of knees and elbows sliding across metal fades away, and then they're back to silence. Fred almost expects the argument to resume, but Gogo and Honey Lemon and Wasabi can barely look at each other. They wander about the room, peering at the vent and then the door, over and over, with the same wary hopefulness they might show when checking the clock the last five minutes of class.

It takes an age, but the steel door of the lab finally slides open. Fred glances up, stomach in his throat, to find Hiro half-smirking at them. Baymax, behind him, stands guard over two motionless robots on the ground.

Wasabi rushes forward, looks at Gogo, closes his mouth. Fred picks up the slack. "Back in business," he says, thumping Hiro on the back as Gogo and Honey Lemon help Baymax into his armor.

"Alright. We still doing this?" Gogo asks, voice hushed as she looks down the corridor.

"Doing—wait, what? We should just get out of here, forget the plan. We're  _way_ out of our league with these robots," Honey Lemon protests.

"But we're not getting another shot at this," Hiro argues. "We get the data on the way out, just like we planned. We're already here."

"Let's just  _go,_ " Fred whispers, grabbing Hiro's arm. There's grumbling from behind them, but Fred's pretty sure everyone's following, if only so they won't be left behind. As best they can, they double back the way they came, slinking through the hallways toward the mainframe. Without Baymax, it might have been a harder journey—Fred's all turned around, but Baymax wordlessly keeps them on track.

They meet only three pairs of robots on the way, but between the six of them they're easily dispatched.

"Fred, you're with Hiro and Baymax." Wasabi whispers as they creep over the threshold and back toward the computer. Since they've been gone, the screen has been shut off, but there are no signs of life nearby. "Get whatever you can find and be quick about it. Everyone else is with me, on watch."

There's no argument, to Fred's surprise. Honey Lemon and Gogo follow Wasabi through the doorway and out into the hall; after a moment's hesitation, Fred closes the door behind them.

Hiro and Baymax get straight to work. The monitor whirrs to life, Hiro sliding his fingers across the touchscreen almost too fast for Fred to catch the intention behind each gesture. Baymax hums in place. It's hard to tell with the robot's typical impassive gesture, but Fred thinks he's more still than usual, lacking his usual movements to observe his surroundings. Hiro's feeding him information, whatever data he can collect.

It's funny, because there's no reason for them to talk; it's to their advantage to remain silent in this situation. Hiro's probably focusing on the information on screen, pulling whatever he can, analyzing and discarding each folder and document, and Fred's supposed to be backup lookout or whatever Wasabi intended. It's probably all in Fred's head, just another case of him reading too much into a situation, but he feels a tension in the air that isn't usually there with Hiro.

Part of it's probably the whole "sneaking in and stealing files thing"—not their usual M.O. by any stretch of the imagination. But as Hiro leans back, watching the upload screen slowly climbing toward  _completed_  status, Fred can't help but feel a need to fill the silence.

Hiro sifts through the documents as they wait, pulling up a detailed schematic on a field of blue. It takes a moment for Fred to mentally rearrange the labelled pieces, IKEA-style, in his mind. It's one of the robots, labelled and separated into discrete components as easily as Fred might categorize the parts of his alarm clock. Except that Fred's pretty sure this particular diagram doesn't go into detail about where the mental programming comes from.

"They're supposed to do as they're told," Hiro says suddenly. "And...I guess they do, really. Except that they get hot-headed. And they  _argue_."

"Well, yeah," Fred says slowly. He glances at Baymax, whose eyes are half-lidded, sleepy. "That's the human part of them. Makes it kind of hard for the whole place to run smoothly when the robots you work with think they're smarter than you are."

Hiro heaves out a slow breath. "Gogo and me are kind of like that, though. Aren't we?"

"What?" Fred frowns, trying to keep up with his friend's line of thought. "Well, I guess, but…no one expects you guys to be robots."

"Yeah, but—okay, you know what I mean. We're the hotheaded, arguing people who get the team into trouble because we can't be...you, know, objective." He rolls his eyes self-deprecatingly. "I guess…I just mean this was a crappy way for all this to come out. I didn't mean—and Gogo wouldn't either—for it to come out like this, right now, in the middle of all this." He makes a gesture with his hand that Fred interprets to mean  _this-stupid-robot-situation._ "We kinda blew up, didn't we?"

"Um, again: no one expects you guys to be robots. You're  _human,_ and it's hard to just, like...box everything up for the greater good. If you  _could_ do that, you'd actually be robots, and we don't want that, so…" Fred finishes lamely. "I guess superheroes do that in the comics sometimes. They're supposed to...do what's best. Without thinking of themselves. But we can't always do that, and no one expects you guys to."

Hiro rests his jaw on his palm, grimacing down at the keyboard.

"For...and, uh...I should have told you," Fred adds after a beat, rubbing at the back of his neck. "I mean all of you guys, but probably at least you."

"Yeah, you should've," Hiro replies. He doesn't say anything else, just gives Fred the chance to continue.

"I know you would've kept it a secret from everyone if I asked you to, and you probably wouldn't have messed with me while I was sorting through what I thought, deciding whether I should go or not."

"I'm surprised you were even able to keep it a secret," Hiro says, his tone deceptively light. "You  _never_ keep secrets. I mean, you know everything about everyone, and you talk so much that I could probably know what you ate for breakfast on any given day."

"Yeah, but that's not a  _secret._ I keep secrets when they're the kind of thing that's...hurtful. Or hard to talk about. The guilty kind, I guess. Like…" Fred folds his arms over his chest, wrapping the claws of his outfit around his forearms. "So I'm supposed to be the neutral guy, right? The peacemaker. Because otherwise we all end up biting each other's heads off, and by  _we_ I mostly mean you, Gogo, and Wasabi. But talking about something like this just felt like throwing a wrench into everything. So it was almost better just not to say anything."

Hiro frowns, looking at him squarely for the first time. "Yeah. But Fred, it's not your job to keep the peace. We're grown college students!" He takes a beat to reconsider what he's said. Then he snorts. "Well, okay. I take it back. That's totally your job. But…even comic book superheroes aren't peacemakers all the time. We've all got our moments, just like everyone else, where things have to change.  _We_  have to change. And just because you usually keep the peace doesn't mean you're not entitled to your own life and whatever, outside of the group."

The bar on the upload screen ticks closer and closer. Fred can feel the tension building inside of him, a coiled spring ready to snap.

"I didn't mean for it to come out like your  _actual decision_  to leave was wrong," Hiro says softly. "It's just you should have told us. It really sucks...it hurt that you didn't, because it felt like you just didn't trust us, or like you just...it didn't matter to you if you up and left all of a sudden without letting us know."

Fred grimaces. "I didn't mean—"

"I know. We both know it wasn't like that. I guess we just...well, it's one thing to know something in theory and another thing to  _know_ it. And really, it's cool that you  _want_ things outside of the group, that there's stuff you want to do. The program sounds amazing, and I think it's awesome that you're chasing after something like that." He bites his lip, scuffing his heels on the floor below the desk. "I'm still mad at you. I'm probably going to be mad for a while. And it's gonna be hard for us to change the group, or to decide what things'll be like."

The uploader bar fills and gives a little chime. Hiro swipes a hand over the screen to quiet it and then pauses, his hand in midair as if he can't remember the next step.

"The upload is complete," Baymax informs them after a beat. Fred glances over to see the robot is back to himself, pulling up to his full height and waddling closer. "We are ready to move to the others."

"Yeah," Hiro says, dropping his hand. He stares at the screen for another moment and then looks at Fred. His expression is tight, but his mouth twists upward in a smile. "You have to tell us everything from now on. Especially me. Promise."

Fred takes the statement for the forgiveness it is. He raises an eyebrow. "You don't want to hear everything about me. Some of my secrets are pretty dumb. But I promise."

"Okay, not the dumb secrets. But anything bigger than, like, winning candy in a contest.  _Especially_ winning candy in a contest."

"I would definitely not tell you that. Because you would steal my candy."

" _Fred._ "

"Okay, okay," Fred relents, and Hiro stands, turning to the door. "Hey. We're okay?"

" _We_ ," Hiro says, frowning as he taps the keypad near the door to open it, "are on probation. But you can get time off for good behavior," he adds.

Fred smiles. "I can live with that."

 


	5. Honey Lemon

As the robot sweeps a punch just a few inches overhead, Honey Lemon lobs one of her chem-balls through its legs. She drops to the ground as it hits the wall behind, hearing the  _thud_ of impact and the  _whoosh_  of expansion. A gust flicks her hair across her back, and by the time she turns to look, the robot has slammed into the opposite wall hard enough to dent the steel.

She rolls to her feet, continuing the motion as she sprints forward. The stunts come easily enough now that she's back in practice. Honey Lemon has always had about zero muscles, has always been that kid who looks like a stick—one of the main reasons she hadn't initially been comfortable with the decision to form a group of  _superheroes._ But what she lacks in muscle, she makes up in agility, having spent most of her childhood in gymnastics up until the point when it ate into her lab time.

Twisting away from a robot's lunge, she reaches down to pull out another chem-ball. She's out of acid balls, and the smokescreens have been ineffective so far. Best guess is that the robots have some sort of visual setting that allows them to read heat signatures. But Honey Lemon's always got a backup.

A little ways off, Wasabi spars with a half dozen robots. He slips one of his lasers through one of their necks; oily, black liquid drips from its casing as it drops to the ground. The other robots are closing in on her, and a stray kick clips Honey Lemon in the thigh as she runs, but she turns her stumble into forward motion.

"On your back!" she calls.

Wasabi turns just enough to say "I wish you wouldn't—" but that's all he manages before she leaps, the flat of her foot pressing into his shoulder and then boosting her upward into the middle of the robot group.

She comes down hard on one of their faces, pressing the chem-ball into its eye socket, feeling the vibration against her palm. The robots twitch spastically, a simultaneous seizure caused by the high-powered microwave emitter, before they fall to the ground.

"Show off," Wasabi says as she turns, but he's smirking. Probably at her triumphant grin.

"Yeah, well, it's the last one I have," Honey Lemon says, pushing it back into her bag. "I need to charge them."

"No time for that." The lab in which they've found themselves, now partially destroyed, is blissfully robot-free, but Honey Lemon can hear noise from outside.

"Coming through!" Gogo sweeps between them, graceful as a figure skater—though Honey Lemon would never make that comparison to her face. "You gonna stand here or help me with the rest?" she calls over her shoulder.

"Let's go," Wasabi retorts, hurrying after her. Gogo leaps over a fallen console, rolling onward without missing a beat.

As agile and as wiry as Honey Lemon is, she's only gotten better since she started training with Gogo. Though you wouldn't expect it just looking at her, Gogo's a natural: years of skateboarding and biking and riding just about anything with wheels has given her enviable ease and grace. And Honey Lemon feels that envy every time she sees her friend fight in earnest.

It's probably a little unusual that Honey Lemon looks up to someone two years younger, but it's nothing she's ever felt weird about. Of course, that's in spite of the fact that their classmates never expect two people as different as Gogo and Honey Lemon to get along at all, let alone to be close as a pair of sisters. Back when Tadashi had first introduced the two of them, they'd clicked instantly. Their friendship only deepened with their familiarity, with hours spent nagging and bitching at each other about cleaning their shared apartment, or binge watching trashy soaps neither of them will admit to watching in public, or stealing napkins and sugar packets just to keep their shoestring budgets.

It's comfortable in a way Honey Lemon has never been with her other friends, comfortable in a way she's only ever felt with people she knows  _really_ well. With her family. And with Wasabi and Tadashi, whom she'd befriended the very first week of school, who had brought her out of her shell.

Because as hard as it is to believe, Honey Lemon hasn't always been as much of a social butterfly as she is now. Growing up, she's had a huge family, aunts and uncles and cousins scattered throughout the area. She was the one called for homework help or babysitting younger cousins; she joined the family in cheering at sports games for her older cousins or pitching in to repaint or renovate one of their homes. Most of her free time had been eaten away by family time, and even now she keeps in constant contact via her cousins' running group chat. But at the end of the day, their large family dissipated into its nuclear components, her cousins went home with their siblings, and she was alone. It wasn't like she didn't have people her own age to be close to, but no one  _really_ like siblings.

Until Wasabi and Tadashi, and especially until Gogo.

As long as they've been friends, though, they've never fought like this before. Not  _seriously,_ not with stilted conversations and long, meaningful silences, or with Gogo avoiding her during stupid stuff like laundry day or picking fights over whose turn it was to pay for lunch. Not in a way where Honey Lemon could only guess what they were  _really_ fighting over.

Now that it's all out in the open, she feels almost relieved.

"The hell are you staring at me for? Move!" Gogo shouts, scowling. She rolls to a t-stop, jabbing the nearest robot into an eye-washing station with her elbow pad.

"Nothing," Honey Lemon says, realizing she's been standing still for some time. Wasabi is down the hall a bit, leaving angry black gouges in a set of wooden cabinets (not to mention the gouges in the chest cavity of one of the robots, now sprawled on the floor). "I'm sorry."

Gogo's scowl deepens. "For everything, I hope."

"That, too." Honey Lemon starts off in Wasabi's direction. After a beat, Gogo follows.

The robots are aiming to kill now, or at least that's the impression Honey Lemon gets from their agitation. If she hadn't had bruises before, they're going to be  _really_ serious tomorrow—she isn't really built for long bouts of close quarters combat. With the help of her chem-balls, she's managed to avoid the worst of the fighting, but they'll run out soon. It's lucky she's near Gogo, who's taking to the robots' aggression with an almost mindless will to pummel something to death. Or whatever constitutes death if you're a robot whose human consciousness was brought back to life or something.

"It's...whatever," Gogo grunts finally, whipping her head back to butt one of them with the back of her helmet. "I still don't get why you didn't just  _say something._ It's not like we don't live together. All you would've had to do was turn to me on the couch."

"Do we have to do this  _now?_ " Wasabi calls incredulously. Honey Lemon's too busy dodging punches to look his way.

"Yes!" Gogo yells. Her voice is strained, but after a hard  _thud,_ it clears up. "I had to find out through  _Professor Cotton,_ seriously! He came by to chat about what my plans were now what with your scholarship and whatever, and I had no idea what he was talking about. He got all... _awkward,_ said probably he shouldn't have mentioned anything to me if you hadn't said anything, but he assumed I already knew because we're  _so close._ "

"It wasn't—personal!" Honey Lemon grunts.

"Obviously! Not personal enough to tell me anything—"

"Gogo—"

"—even though this whole thing's set in stone—"

"Gogo,  _watch your back!_ "

Gogo turns in time to roll out of the way of a lunging robot; Wasabi thrusts his blade out to slice it as it comes down. It ends on the floor in pieces.

"Nothing's going to change," Honey Lemon argues, wincing both at her own words and at the blow she blocks with her forearm (that's gonna hurt later, even with the armor). She imagines rather than sees Gogo's glower. "Okay, okay, things—are going to change. But we didn't— _I_ didn't keep you out of the loop on purpose. I didn't not tell you just to be cruel. It's just that I knew you would try to talk me out of it, since it's an experimental program, and even just—well, I'm already trying to talk myself out of it—"

One of the robots slams into her chest, pinning her to a wall. Honey Lemon sees stars; they clear just quickly enough for her to make out the blurred form of another robot drawing back a fist. She kicks out with her boots and drives it back. Her left arm reaches into her bag for a chem ball, and after she elbows the robot off of her and onto the floor, she tosses it onto the ground. It expands quickly, with a windy  _whoosh,_ and Honey Lemon leaps back to avoid getting tangled into the mess. This is one of her favorites, one that expands with the consistency of a marshmallow in the microwave only to harden to the durability of steel in about ten seconds. Honey Lemon watches with fondness as the robots struggle and then are rendered immovable in a sea of orange, like some absurdist painting.

When she turns, Gogo is staring at her. "It's just that I don't know if I can actually do it," she continues. "It's probably the scariest thing I've ever done. But I want to try. I have to try. It's like—if I don't do this, I know I'll regret it forever. I know I'll always wonder what could have happened if I'd gone."

"No, I…" Gogo frowns, looking small for a minute. "I guess I get it. That's valid, your feelings are valid and everything. I'd probably feel the same way. But it...it still wasn't cool."

"No one's leaving forever. When you went to visit your grandparents over Christmas break we literally were on chat or video chat at least, like, every other day to talk about stupid stuff. You really think we'd just—"

"I mean, I know we'd keep in touch," Gogo says quickly. "But—"

"Little help here," Wasabi grunts. Gogo and Honey Lemon spin to find him struggling under the weight of three of the robots. With no small effort, they manage to each take one down, though Gogo's is a close call—it she ducks away from a metal fist just in time to keep it from crushing her skull against the wall. As she stands over her own fallen robot, Honey Lemon thinks she's gotta get some pain meds for her head soon.

Wasabi carves a hole into the last one. Honey Lemon peers up and down the corridor, where robots lay scattered on the floor, severed limbs and torsos almost gruesome but for the presence of sputtering sparks. It's finally quiet. She sways a little on her feet, pulling her hair over her shoulder and off of her sweaty neck.

Gogo offers an arm to Wasabi, who takes it and clambers to his feet, breathing heavily. "Things are changing, but they aren't really," he says at last. "No one's leaving forever. The important stuff—the team, us hanging out and stuff—that's all staying the same. Did you really think we could leave you behind?"

Gogo grimaces. "Guess not."

"You better  _know_ we wouldn't," he tells her, smiling.

She smirks back, but pushes it into a scowl as soon as she catches herself. "Don't think this discussion is over," she gripes.

"Wouldn't dream of it," Honey Lemon replies.

A noise from around the corner, forty or so feet off. Honey Lemon stiffens. Wasabi's plasma lasers flare to life again, and Gogo is already pushing forward on her skates when Fred and Hiro round the corner, Baymax wobbling behind.

They relax, tension ebbing from Honey Lemon's shoulders. She can't help but notice that the others don't look much better off; the tail of Fred's suit is so damaged it trails on the ground behind him, and Hiro's black eye has spent enough time marinating that it's  _really_ purple now. She strides forward to meet them, but before she has enough time to ask how they are, Fred bursts out laughing.

"Oh my god," he wheezes. "Hiro, just to be transparent like you said, I'm gonna say it looks like a freaking massacre in here. Like something from  _Lord of the Rings_. Freaking Amon Hen or something."

"Too soon, Fred. Too soon." Hiro grins, carefully stepping over a twitching body.

Gogo has gotten close enough to push her fist against the toothy mouth of his suit. "What a creep."

"It's Hiro's fault. He wanted me to share all of my inner thoughts."

"That is  _not_ what I—"

"Good. You'd better," Gogo says.

"At this point, it's probably safe to say that if the robots had some way of alerting Krei remotely rather than physically going to get him, he'd be here by now?" Fred asks.

"I guess so," Hiro replies, looking troubled. He peers at Baymax. "That's how it works with us, anyway—Baymax can only talk to us through a headset if we're listening in, but it didn't seem like Krei was earlier."

"Did you get it?" Wasabi cuts in, probably before the conversation can become completely derailed.

"We have the documents and blueprints. Proof," Baymax says, patting his chest.

"Good man."

"Now's the part where we burn this place to the ground," Gogo says.

"Wait, what?"

"No, seriously. Think about it. No one wants to be agreeing with crazy lady Fujita here, but she tried it a while ago for a reason, and we actually need to finish that step for her. It kills all the robots and puts Krei in a place where he can't just sell and profit from them.  _And,_ most importantly, where he can't make more of them. He's doing them  _here,_ in these labs, and if we wait for some stupid legal proceeding to decree 'okay, actually this was illegal,' it could literally be  _months._ Maybe even years, who knows? The point is, if we leave this stuff as is, he just repairs whatever's broken and keeps churning them out while he knows he can. If we get rid of everything…"

Honey Lemon frowns. "It's arson. That's…"

"Yeah," Gogo replies, sober. "I know."

Hiro rubs at his eye. "I think we have to. If we're voting, I mean. It's not...if we walk out now, we might as well be telling him 'feel free to continue.'"

"We're gonna just do arson while we're  _in uniform_?" Wasabi asks incredulously.

"Who's he gonna tell? Even if he's got us on video, he's got us on video  _fighting robots,_ and we have documented proof now about how those robots were made. We're already here doing all this crap, and...in for a penny, in for a pound, you know?"

"Ugh," Wasabi says, squeezing his eyes shut. By unspoken agreement, the others keep watch, peering down opposite sides of the hallway as he takes a moment to consider. "I can't believe I'm saying this, but you're right," he says finally. "Let's burn this place down."

"Wow," Gogo says, grinning. "Our fearless leader just advocated for criminal activity. Can you say that again for posterity?"

"It hurt enough the first time. Let's do this before I change my mind."

"Baymax," Hiro says, "there are still no humans around?"

"Following a scan of the facilities, I can confirm that Krei is the only one remaining on the premises. He is in the south wing where the blueprints illustrated the private offices. If we are planning to burn the labs, I anticipate that he would have an adequate escape route to leave the building if the offices burn as well."

"Also, does anyone know how to arson," Hiro says under his breath.

"Well, we're not gonna be able to control the fire's direction or anything," Gogo replies, "but Fred's basically a walking case of arson, and I mean that in many ways."

"I'll take that as a compliment," Fred retorts cheerfully. "Let's figure out where to start it."

.

They end up starting it in strategic areas around the labs, Wasabi and Baymax taking out the odd robot that comes their way. Fred gets good use out of his suit, seeming a little too happy about all of this for a normal, non-Fred sort of person.

But the fire is hard for Hiro, Honey Lemon realizes. When the flames start to take in earnest, he looks on with a tight frown, hanging back a little. "C'mon," she tells him, threading her arm through his. "Let's go outside."

They all go together, Fred whooping in excitement like some sort of deranged, pyromaniac trick-or-treater. Outside of the tight enclosure of the building, out in the cool night air, Hiro seems to loosen up. He and Gogo follow Fred, laughing hysterically as he starts quoting the Targaryen house motto while his flamethrower catches the side of the building.

"This could be interpreted pretty badly by the wrong person," Wasabi says casually, sidling up to her.

"You mean the maniacal laughter mixed with arson?"

"Yeah, that part."

"They're all insane."

"Oh, for sure."

For a moment, Honey Lemon thinks she understood what Hiro thought, what he felt, staring unmoving into the fire a few minutes earlier. Tadashi. It's weird that he feels so close  _now,_ as the blackened smoke and yellow flames eat away at the walls of the labs. But just for a second, she can almost sense him nearby. Warmth beyond the fire. Smiling.

Wasabi shuffles from foot to foot. He looks at Honey Lemon, and then he looks away. "You think...you think we're gonna be okay?"

The ash swirls down around them. Some of it gets in Honey Lemon's face, and she blinks hard, smiling anyway. Without meeting his gaze, she grabs his hand and squeezes it gently.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Honey Lemon is one of my faves even though this chapter was a bit shorter than the others. She just didn't have as much to cover :)
> 
> One more chapter and it's done!


	6. Hiro

"Abigail.  _Abigail_. Stop pacing," Hiro grumbles, leaning back in his chair. Abigail ignores him, striding slowly up and down the steel catwalk, one hand lingering on the rail for support. Even after all this time, she sometimes needs the extra stability when she's been on her feet for so long. "Seriously. You're making me anxious. You're making  _Baymax_ anxious. Right, big guy?"

Baymax's head swivels to face Hiro. The robot currently sits in the docking station Hiro modified for him, one that plays nicely with the power circuits here in Abigail's lab. "I am a robot," he states, "and—"

Abigail and Hiro chime in: "—cannot experience anxiety, as that would undermine your ability to provide clinical advice."

"We know, we know," Hiro adds with a yawn, rolling his stiff shoulders. "It was just to get her to stop. You should back me up sometime."

"You should both stop," Baymax retorts.

" _I'm_ not pacing," Hiro replies, waving his arms in a floppy,  _here-I-sit_ sort of gesture.

"You should both stop waiting for the information upload," Baymax clarifies. "I can monitor the data myself, and both of your stress levels are elevated. In addition, rest will allow your body to heal from the events of tonight, Hiro."

"Yeah, I know," Hiro agrees tiredly, thinking of the others, all of them passed out in blissful slumber in the downstairs waiting area. A couple months ago, Fred had convinced Abigail to forego the traditional stiff plastic chairs in favor of a modern-looking sofa and a few long, ottoman-like chairs. It had been a running joke that the seats had to be soft enough for Abigail to sleep on, married to her work as she is. At any rate, the new purchases had come in handy tonight, when the others have all but collapsed onto the soft furniture, trusting Abigail to wake them after the data transfer.

As the unspoken liaison between Big Hero 6 and Abigail, who's become something like an unofficial seventh member slash coordinator, Hiro feels like he should be awake for this part, if only because it doesn't seem fair for Abigail to stay up to do this on her own.

"It's fine. I wouldn't be sleeping anyway," Abigail says quietly, looking out over the expanse of her lab.

The Silent Sparrow labs have changed dramatically since her reappearance just under a year ago, since she purchased the abandoned land with the windfall from her court case. In that time, a network of bridges and highways have sprung up to connect the outlying islands of San Fransokyo bay, including this one. Now, it's home to a few apartment complexes, a medical school and hospice. And to Abigail's lab.

The bones of the building are the same, though: an open-air, warehouse-style lab with an observation platform where the three of them now sit, a gable-roof skylight stretching across the ceiling high overhead, now showing the inky black sky. Rows of offices and interior rooms are to the back.

But instead of the raised portal into which Abigail had once vanished, the lab floor is practically a playground. The structure houses a raised area with patches of dirt, sand dunes, grassy fields, and sloping cement, all surrounded by a series of treadmills and a hatch in the floor that opens to a small, three-foot-deep pool. All of this Abigail built to play with her newest projects, now sitting motionless against one wall of the room: robotic exoskeletons. In truth, they look almost like a pair of robotic pants to sit someone in. Their design is a fusing of Abigail's vision and schematics with a touch of Hiro's help, and they  _work._ Walking around in them, Abigail gets her daily dose of physical therapy, and the sensors track her gait and posture with real-time feedback. It's not ready for beta testing yet, or at least Abigail's too anxious about perfecting it, but they've come a long way from where they were.

Truth be told, this is way more space than Abigail needs for her work, but it's nice to have. Hiro knows she likes having it, likes setting off on her own without being under the thumb of a major organization. But sometimes, like now, she spends time staring out onto the wide open floor, and Hiro wonders if she's imagining the way the building used to look, the buildings and machines that once belonged there when everything was under Krei's thumb.

He leaves her to it. Hiro swivels in his chair, scooting closer to the monitor. Baymax perks up a bit at his approach, but his eyes are sleepy, half-closed. "Getting closer," Hiro murmurs, looking at the progress bar. "Let's see what else…"

Hiro knows these labs like the back of his hand, and a quarter of the information on this computer is his own work, or at least something he and Abigail have worked on together: plans to streamline the design of the therapy robotics, the designs for the app and feedback process, side work with the flexible cast Hiro and Gogo had created, prototype sketches for a wearable waistband that automatically corrects back posture.

The files definitely have a running theme, a clear direction for their ideas. Hiro hesitates on the last file, though.  _One of these things is not like the others._ The window slides open, filling in with an elemental breakdown, a chart with more questions than answers.

The samples Abigail had brought back with her from within the portal are housed in an airtight, shatterproof container in the storage room, but everything they know about them is right here. Neither of them knows what to do with the information, the strange radioactive material that glows sporadically and seems to change positions when they aren't looking.

"Is it finished?" Abigail asks suddenly. His chair settles backward as she leans her weight against the top of it.

"Not yet—oh, wait," Hiro replies, closing the window. The status bar hovers at the top of the screen, completely filled. "Let's take a look…"

She spends a few moments staring at the screen, eyes darting around furiously, and Hiro moves his chair so she can pull one closer and drop into it. He knows all of this himself, having lived the whole thing. And it's Abigail's opinion that matters most now. 

If you didn't know her, you'd maybe think her quieter,  _weaker_ than she used to be. But Abigail has a way of getting her voice heard. When asked, she's always said, wryly, that it helps that she's friends with lots of lawyers these days. But Hiro thinks it's more than that. Something about her, whether it's new since the accident or something that's always been there, doesn't take no for an answer.

When she finishes reading, Abigail gives a low whistle. "This is  _insane._ Maybe certifiable." She begins separating the important bits, categorizing them in a more digestible way for the team of lawyers that will no doubt rip Krei a new one come break of day. "I might not have believed it if it hadn't been for all the proof. Not knowing what Alistair used to be like...he's fallen far from when I knew him."

There's something sad in Abigail's tone, though her gestures are steady as she files everything into place. She falls silent, and Hiro lets her go to that distant place again. For a time, he dozes in his seat, his limbs throbbing with bruises and his thoughts hazy.

"Go to sleep," Abigail tells him eventually. "You honestly look terrible."

"Gee, thanks," he says, stretching his arms overhead. They feel a bit wobbly, and he pulls them back down.

"And...maybe think about taking on some less serious work for a while," Abigail continues after a beat. "You guys could use the downtime. And time to think about what's coming up."

Hiro yawns, looking over at her. "What's coming up?"

"All the school stuff," she says, shrugging. Hiro and Gogo, in the time spent moping around the lab, have complained a little about their irritation with the others, their silent fight about being left out of future plans.

"It's all sorted out now," Hiro replies sleepily. "Or—kind of, anyway."

Abigail nods. "I'm sorry, by the way. About sending you to Krei in the first place. I know you guys didn't take it that way, but it's my fault you got into all this."

"No, it wasn't. You didn't know. And if we had to do it all again knowing what was up, we probably would."

"Yeah," she says. "Still sorry about it, though. And about Krei."

Hiro feels limp in his chair, but he rolls his head to look at her. "You really...you were worried about him."

Abigail doesn't respond right away. She stares at the screen, her eyes glinting blue in the light. "Yes. I know it probably doesn't make sense. He's an asshole. I know he is. Even before I knew he was pulling crap like... _this_ ," she adds, waving her hands at the readouts, "I knew that much. And now I know he's...worse."

"But you're worried."

"Not enough to  _not_ set a crack team of lawyers on him," Abigail replies, a wry twist to her mouth. "Not enough to let him off easy for this." Hiro remains quiet, half because he means to let her think, and half because he doesn't have the energy to think of what else to say to her. "But yeah, I worry. We were friends once. Or something. I guess that doesn't mean anything to him now, but it still means something to me. But at a certain point, I think you just...let people make their own decisions. And you hope they make the right ones."

Hiro rubs gingerly at his sore eye. He exhales slowly. "Yeah," he says. "Sounds about right to me."

"Go to sleep, Hiro," Abigail says, shoving his shoulder gently. It gives a painful twinge of protest, which wakes him up.

"Going, going." He clambers to his feet. "Ready, Baymax?"

"I am ready."

Hiro turns back, ready to say something to Abigail, but she's already lost in thought, eyes wandering around the screen, and he takes the stairs down to the lower floor instead.

The others are grumpy (Gogo and Wasabi) or sluggish (Fred and Honey Lemon) when they wake, but Hiro and Baymax manage to coerce them into Wasabi's car, grumbling and slow. They cram their armor and gear into the back as best they can, and Wasabi takes the wheel without discussion. Everyone else slides into their seats, falling asleep almost instantly in the most awkward positions, Gogo pressed against the front passenger window and Honey Lemon with her feet stretched across the storage console. Hiro, curled in the backseat with Fred drooling against his shoulder, feels terribly awake. He stares out at the darkened buildings of Setsuzoku rushing past, and he cracks the window to feel the cool night air on his face.

Strange how much it feels like a normal night. Like they're just going home after a typical patrol, or after a late evening goofing off at Fred's place, all of them ready to finally get into their beds. Looking out at the slope of the city below as they approach, at the distant golden streets winding together, he can almost pretend that this is normal. That nothing that happened tonight matters. Krei and his stupid, totally insane schemes.

Wasabi and Fred and Honey Lemon leaving.

"I am...curious. About something from earlier tonight," Baymax announces from his position above the sunroof. Wasabi drives slowly enough, especially now that they're coasting downhill, that the wind doesn't rush over the robot's words, and Hiro can hear him as plainly as if he were sitting beside him.

"What's up?"

"Krei's robots were remarkably humanoid in processing and in behavior."

Hiro waits for the rest. Nothing else comes. "Yeah?"

"It appears that there might be significant advantages to such a situation, were it not for the obvious moral implications of creating such an artificial intelligence."

"Well...I dunno," Hiro replies slowly. "Maybe." Baymax is again quiet, and Hiro realizes what the robot might be trying to ask. "What? No. Are you wondering if  _you_ could…?"

"Barring the need to sacrifice a human consciousness," Baymax says.

Hiro opens and closes his mouth, unsure where to start. "Do you  _want_ to be more like them?"

"Not particularly," the robot hums. "If there were a better method, one in which the AI would more accurately emulate human thought, I would perhaps be more capable."

"You're plenty capable."

"I continue to have a difficult time understanding a significant portion of human behavior, though I will admit that my database has come a long way from when you and I first met. I did not understand why you and Gogo were behaving the way you were. Perhaps I should have known."

Guilt settles into the pit of Hiro's stomach. While Abigail had known the source of their troubles, Hiro and Gogo had decided not to tell Baymax for a pretty tactical reason: the robot is incapable of keeping a secret or lying to save his life. "That's not fair, though. I didn't  _tell_ you, neither of us did. And—and no one expects you, or people in general, to be a mind-reader _._ " Hiro rolls the window down a bit more, cautiously jostling Fred a bit to lean outside, armpit against the car interior. "That's just our fault, big guy. I'm sorry you thought it was on you. But...you're great the way you are. Seriously. I trust you more than just about anyone I know, maybe even more than me. I mean, think about what we've seen with Krei, and Fujita, and all of us tonight. Humans are stupid, and messy, and…"

"Those are all things I enjoy about you," Baymax replies. Hiro smiles.

"That's why you guys are such good bros," Fred murmurs sleepily.

"This conversation is sickeningly adorable," Gogo adds from the front seat, "but couldn't you have waited till you were home so the rest of us could sleep?"

Hiro kicks the back of her seat.

"For the record," Honey Lemon says, "we really are sorry."

"You better be," Gogo retorts, turning in her seat to face them.

"We'll work out a patrol calendar," Wasabi says suddenly from the front. "Everyone puts their schedules online so we can sync 'em, figure out when we're all on break to visit or whatever, and then we do patrols." He looks up at Hiro through the rearview mirror, eyebrows raised. "The two of you and Baymax do  _small stuff_ while we're out. Swear to God I'm keeping tabs with Abigail from now on...so nothing crazy. Anything big, you call us up and we take care of it together."

"You guys'll still do patrols?"

"Did you think we were gonna leave you guys to have all the fun?" Honey Lemon asks, smiling.

Gogo frowns. "I guess...it just seems like you guys are going so far. I didn't think—"

"And it's not like it's  _forever._ "

"You say that now, but—"

"For me," Wasabi says, "just one year until I can do the low-residency program and be here in town most of the time, except a couple two-week stints at St. Kakichi's. Honey Lemon, your thing is two years, and Fred, yours is—a year?"

"Plus holidays. East Fujian has like two billion weeklong festivals, so I'll be back in town a bunch to visit."

"It won't be so bad," Honey Lemon says plaintively.

Gogo glances at Hiro, and then turns back to face the front. "Yeah, we'll see."

They all grow quiet, but Hiro thinks it's not as tense a silence as before. Gogo doesn't speak again, but she's not throwing off the  _I'm-gonna-kill-you-slowly_  vibe that usually comes when she's really angry.

Eventually, the car rattles to stop in front of the Lucky Cat Cafe. The windows are dark. The only sound as Hiro slides out of the door is the quiet hum of the engine and murmured  _goodnights_  from the others, whoever's still awake. Baymax gingerly slips onto the ground as Hiro pulls their armor from the trunk, wobbling a little under the weight of Baymax's until the robot waddles over to hoist it up.

Hiro fishes the key out of his pocket to open the door. The harsh white of the streetlight outside spills across the entrance, and Hiro shushes his companion as they step across the empty floor. Baymax manages to only knock into two of the tables with his girth, and they clamber up the stairs.

"Hiro? Is that you?"

Blue light from Aunt Cass's room suggests that her TV is on—but at this hour? Hiro hurriedly shoves his armor into Baymax's arms, pushing the robot in the direction of his room in the hopes that he'll understand his intentions. "Yeah, Aunt Cass."

He creeps forward, keenly aware of how sore he feels, how terrible his face must look, and how his clothes still smell of smoke.

Aunt Cass is pulling on her robe when he steps onto the threshold of her room. The television volume is low, a news anchor talking with someone in front of a fire truck. "You—Hiro, you—"

"Sorry," he says at once. "I was out with Gogo. Um, bot fighting." It's not something he'd normally admit to, but given what he's  _actually_ been up to, it seems like the better option. The only thing his listless mind can come up with now.

"I thought you were going to stop that," she says, approaching cautiously, as if he might run away. She lifts a hand to brush some hair from his forehead.

"Yeah, it wasn't—I mean,  _I_ didn't have any entries in the contest, but Gogo and I just got caught up in a fight when stuff started to go south. The others were there, too."

Aunt Cass looks at him for a long moment. "That's not where you really were, is it?" she asks. Hiro, too surprised to react, remains silent. She sighs, and then she pulls him closer. "Lots of fires lately," she murmurs softly, hugging him. "I lost Tadashi in a fire once. Don't let me lose you, too."

"Okay," he says hoarsely after a beat.

She squeezes his shoulders and lets him go. "Go to sleep. You look like you need it. We'll talk in the morning."

Hiro steps back into the hall, still uncertain. He turns back to face her. "I'm...sorry?"

"It's alright," she says with a smile, the soft one she uses sometimes when she talks about Hiro's mom, or about Tadashi. "We'll talk in the morning. You're going to apologize to me more then."

"Oh. Okay."

It's not until he reaches his room, tiredly pulling off his clothes to change into something that smells less like smoke, that he realizes that Aunt Cass  _knows._ She must know everything, about Big Hero 6 and what they're doing. What Hiro does, all those times when he lies to her about where he's been.

"You seem troubled," Baymax tells him sleepily from his charging port.

Hiro shushes him, closing the door. "Volume level lower, bud. And yeah, I'm...it's...I think Aunt Cass knows what we're doing."

Baymax stares at him blankly as Hiro stares at the closed door. "What you are doing?"

"Big Hero 6. Fighting, and patrols and all that. She knows why I've been lying to her. Or that I've been lying at all."

"I believe she has known for quite some time."

Hiro, who had been getting into bed, whips his head around. "Wait, what?"

"I am certain that she has seen your armor on several occasions. She cleans the house, and your hiding places are fairly poor."

Hiro groans. "Thanks for telling me this now, bud."

"You are welcome."

"Why didn't you say anything?"

"I imagined that if your aunt did not confront you, she must not want you to know. I calculated the risk of causing emotional harm to be higher if I told one or both of you, and so I kept silent."

"To be nice. You kept quiet." Hiro considers this. "That's...pretty cool of you, actually. A decision like that. With the kinds of things you've learned, maybe you're getting the right kinds of human parts. Like actual tact."

Baymax hums warmly. "Maybe," he says, closing his eyes. Hiro rolls over in bed, pulling the blankets up to his chest.

For about five minutes, he dozes off, and then his phone buzzes with an incoming text. He grunts, pulling it closer and swiping through the password, reading the screen blearily.

_ok,_ Gogo says.  _can we pretend to be mad at them for like two more days and then we can forgive them_

Hiro smiles, pulling his pillow overhead, and types out a response:  _sounds good_

_think it'll be ok for real? like they said_

He pauses, frowning. In truth, their future seems hazy. Intangible. Wasabi and the others are moving on, actually  _leaving._ And there's no way to pretend things can stay the same as they are now. At this late hour, it's too hard for Hiro to even imagine what things will look like. He's not sure he wants to, either, because despite all of their reassurances, Hiro's chest twinges when he considers the uncertainty of what's to come.

Maybe they're done. Maybe  _Big Hero 6_ is done. Maybe, despite what Wasabi and the others have promised, they're all going their separate ways after graduation, chasing after futures that are wholly their own.

But tonight, aching and sore from battles fought alongside his teammates, Hiro doesn't think so.

_we'll make it ok_

Gogo doesn't respond, or if she does, Hiro's too far gone to sense the vibration. Sleep takes him like a sneak attack.

He wakes in the morning with the phone pressed onto his forearm, a red line from the edge of it across his skin. The smell of baking pastries fills the air, and light chatter from downstairs tells him that the cafe is already open.

When he pulls himself upright, he can see Wasabi's car parked across the street. The raucous laughter from below is Fred's. After a moment, Hiro rubs the sleep from his eyes and goes down to meet them.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Woo, it's finally finished! And spoiler: they all keep in touch and are still friends even in the future, regardless of shenanigans like the ones in this story. Pretty sure that's just how it's meant to be.
> 
> Anyway...I think I have one more story from this universe in me? If and when I have time to write it. Those weird samples they picked up have been bugging me since I mentioned them in the last story. And something to do with Tadashi. We'll see how things go :)
> 
> Let me know what you thought!

**Author's Note:**

> Gogo is honestly a tiny bit insane and I love her :)
> 
> FYI this chapter will be the longest one by far, I think…but we'll have to see. Usually I try to post stories on some sort of schedule, but the best I can do this time around is say that the next chapter will be out whenever I have time to write and polish it. And that next up is Baymax's turn to share his thoughts.
> 
> Let me know what you thought?


End file.
